Missing Downloadable Content = You suck

I was a little bored last night and decided to play a little XBox. Unusual, I know. No one was online, so I looked over my collection (which depresses me since I have upwards of 60 titles now) to see what I would like to play. I have been playing Borderlands a lot, but I am at a point where it is really no fun single player. I have been playing NHL 09 as well, but both my forward and my defenceman have won every award possible in Be a Pro mode, so it's a little boring. As for COD:WAW, the only other game I play religiously, it requires at least Graybush, preferably Blackwalt as well and optimally including Coxxorz. Since only Blackwalt came online and he was busy with some other game he recently purchased (his collection being significantly more impressive (i.e. depressing) than mine).

I therefore pondered my collection. I have been debating getting back to Overlord II, but wasn't in the mood. Tried Splinter Cell the other night and while cool, it was really freaking hard and it requires patience and concentration. A no go for me. Blackwalt lent me Dragon Age: Origins, but I wasn't keen to get that involved in something.

While my eyes were browsing through the collection, the fixed upon Saint's Row II. Yes, the same game I horribly maligned only to fall in love with long ago. I thought it might be worth starting a new character and going back to the Row, baby!

This I did and I was having a great time. Coxxorz sent me a message asking if I needed help. I thought, "SR2 Co-op is a blast! Why not?" He comes online and we discuss the best way to do it. He hasn't finished the game, so I offer to come into his game with my main character. He agrees, starts a game and sends me an invite. I accept, select my character and load. We get the following message:

Error joining game. You do not have the same downloadable content as the host.

WTF???

We check our content and sure enough I have downloaded a pack of extra stuff to buy at the SR2 stores that Coxxorz doesn't have. It's a free d/l, so he downloads it while I wait. Done, great, let's try again ...

Error joining game. You do not have the same downloadable content as the host.

Gaahh!

We then go into separate games to try to figure out what content one of us is missing. Coxxorz doesn't have the funky new vehicles that come with the Tera Patrick add-on, so we assume his d/l of that DLC is corrupted. He starts that download while I play on my own for a bit. Finally, he sends another invite and I join again ...

Eureka!

That fixed it and we play for awhile until we get hit by another SR2 'feature' I had forgotten, which was it randomly crashes, taking the XBox with it. At this point it was really late so I called it a night.

So my point to all of this rambling is that I really can't understand why they would have designed the game so you can't play it with someone else who doesn't have the same content. In the COD series, it simply adjusts the co-op game to the person with the least amount of content, disabling newer DLCs. this makes sense. Also, why can't it freaking TELL you what content is missing instead of forcing players to go through hoops trying to figure out who is missing what??

So much for that idea.