Dead Island
Yeah, yeah, it could have been better. It wasn't perfect. Could have been more polished, could have had more variety. If the game just game out five years earlier, it would have blown people away.
I just finished the Ryder White campaign, which to be perfectly honest, it kind of sucked (if you compare it to where they might have gone with it). There was so much potential there that they wasted. Yet I really loved it, and it reminded me of just how much I love this game. Where the main campaign tried to be an open world first person shooter/whacker (while failing to meet the standards of A-list titles such as GTA and Fallout 3), Ryder White removes all the open world and RPG elements of the game and goes with linear FPS (which I thought was fun). It is kind of fun being able to open fire on zombies and not having to worry about whether or not you'll be able to find more ammo in the near future. I thoroughly enjoyed the DLC, and as far as DLC goes, which never quite feels worth the money, this one felt pretty worthwhile.
I can't help but feel they took it in the wrong direction though. It could have been so much more. Dead Island had some really good stuff going for it, and most people felt it didn't meet its full potential. The DLC was a good opportunity to add on and improve to the original game, leaning from their mistakes and taking the thing to the next level. Instead they kind of went the easy route and watered it down to more linear experience, which is still a lot of fun, but somehow missing the spark of what made Dead Island so special in the first place. For an open world game, Dead Island was too short and too linear to begin with, I feel like going from mostly linear to entirely linear for the DLC was a pretty big step in the wrong direction. Co-op really made the Dead Island experience that much more fun, so making the Ryder White DLC single player only, while serving the story well, was a pretty big let down.
Still, I really hope the Ryder White DLC isn't the last we see of this game. It is honestly probably my favorite title released in the last couple of years, and definitely the best co-op game I've played since Borderlands, regardless of its flaws. I'd really liked to see more of this game, and I'd most definitely love to see a sequel that manages to improve on the current game (hell, if it is even just as good as Dead Island, I still say it would be $60 well spent).