Well, it was always bound to happen. I tend to take advantage of the holiday discounts on the Playstation store and normally I will make these purchases only when the game in question in 60 to 80 percent off of the original price. In the past when I had less time to play video games I wouldn't buy any games at all but instead wait for the free games each month and only play those. But after a string of what I considered to be less-than-stellar offerings I had to buy something and in the past 6 months I am afraid that I have actually managed to acquire both of these titles before they were "free" this January. One of these two games is excellent and the other one is just OK https://dagersystem.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/gfr2.jpg [src](https://dagersystem.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/gfr2.jpg)

Greedfall

Greedfall appealed to me as a genre and also the rather unique setting. It is a Witcher-like semi-open-world RPG that combines firearms with melee weapons and a bit of "magic" mixed in. The game seemed wonderful because you have 2 computer controlled team mates that come with you and it is up to you to a certain degree about which ones that you bring along with you. You have to nurture your relationships with the various people in your crew and the relationship that you have with them increase (or decrease) the bonuses that you receive with their company. Your ability to freely roam the land also depends on how you interact with the various factions and companies that exist throughout the lands. Where this game falls flat is that the AI on both your team mates and most enemies is pretty bad and particularly in boss battles, you can basically count on your team mates dying on a regular basis. This seems to be a game-breaker until you realize that ranged firearms are waaaaay overpowered in this game and the only thing you need to do in order to defeat basically every enemy in the game (including bosses) is specialize in guns, load up on gunpowder and constantly fire and kite (keep a distance from the enemy.) The enemies that you face for the most part do not have ranged capabilities and even when they do it is extremely easy to avoid their attacks. Combine this with what eventually becomes a cut-scene inundated fetch quest nightmare and the game stops being fun after you have been forced for the 20th time to run up the stairs to talk to someone who is unnecessarily in a difficult and time-consuming part of the castle to reach. Also, every single castle in the game has exactly the same layout - which is just lazy on the developers part. This game is just decent and I didn't finish it because of the tedium. Hopefully the developers have learned from their mistakes and will build upon it in the future.

https://assets1.ignimgs.com/2018/04/27/shadow-of-the-tomb-raider---button-2a-1524790356997.jpg [src](https://assets1.ignimgs.com/2018/04/27/shadow-of-the-tomb-raider---button-2a-1524790356997.jpg)

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

I LOVE these games for a variety of reasons. The first reason is that I have been a fan of Lara Croft since the very first Tomb Raider game back on the PS1 and the second is that when the rebooted the series for modern-day consoles they stepped away from the rather silly plots that they started to get a bit bananas with in the late 90's and early 2000's and instead changed directions to have a more realistic aspect to the games. There are still some "magic" enemies that you will encounter from time-to-time but for the most part the enemies you face are human and animal and that makes the game less ridiculous. This is "kind of" open world and there are a ton of optional side-quests and collectibles that are totally up to you if you want to take them on. For most players, I recommend that they follow the main story at first and then when they hit a wall on difficulty, to backtrack to previous areas that are now going to be extremely easy based on the powerups that you encounter along the way and go back and "level up" in the prior areas. This game is just the right level of difficulty for the casual gamer but might be considered a bit too easy for hardcore gamers. The only pitfall of this game that I can think of is that it has a ton of cutscenes but thankfully, you can skip them at any time if you find them to be too prevalent (which is what I ended up doing rather early on in the game.)

PS5 owners were also given Man Eater, which is a game that I cannot comment on because I do not yet own one of these elusive systems. I am waiting for the holiday craze to wear off and then they will be available at every store, every day. Unfortunately for me this month is a dead month since I already purchased both of these games for something silly like $5 each a few months ago but for those that didn't already have them, you are in for a treat.... well, with Tomb Raider you are. I would be surprised if most people can tolerate the rather sloppy gameplay of Greedfall in order to complete it.