Games you should play on 4/20

Get ready to kiss the sky

What up dawgs; happy Saturday. Look: Today is a day weve all been looking forward to--time to kick back, relax, and just let it all go. You know, the weekend. And how do we like to spend our weekends? By playing some games. Video games. Nice.

SpaceChem

How well do you know the Periodic Table of Elements, really? With puzzle gameplay that all but requires a degree in engineering, SpaceChem is the logical thinkers dream. Taking place in a future where space colonies need chemical products, you play as a Reactor Engineer tasked with turning raw materials into something useful. Youll have to manage your factories at the macro level, then do some chemical restructuring at the molecular level. After all, youve got quotas and deadlines to meet.

Its a blast to rearrange atoms in the quest for efficient production. Zachtronics Industries, makers of the game, offers some insight into its inner workings, saying that The core programming model consists of two threads that operate simultaneously, requiring players to explore and master concepts like in-order execution, loops, branching, synchronization primitives, and subroutines in an organic and comprehensible environment. Sounds amazing!

The Walking Dead

Few games can make you feel emotion as deeply as Telltales The Walking Dead. Our 2012 Game of the Year winner puts you in the shoes of Lee Everett, trying to make sense of a barren world with a population thats 90% undead. He finds purpose after meeting Clementine, a young girl whos unprepared--understandably--for the zombie apocalypse. The two band together to survive--and the bond they form will touch you in ways you never imagined.

Eternal Darkness: Sanitys Requiem

You wont be sure whats real and whats not when playing Eternal Darkness--but rest assured, you will be afraid. This GameCube survival horror game put Silicon Knights on the map (lets face it, few people played the original Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain). To unlock the secrets behind defeating an ancient evil, youll have to travel through time and control denizens from many different eras. Youll also have to kill a boatload of skeletons along the way.

But what makes Eternal Darkness scares so memorable is the Sanity system, which causes you to hallucinate terrifying images with no warning whatsoever. This could be something as mundane as a glitched TV, or as extreme as envisioning yourself lying in a bathtub filled to the brim with blood, or your save file being corrupted. Even after youre done playing, dont be surprised if you start to question your sanity, or distrust the very fabric of reality itself.

Train Simulator 2013

ES44AC, SW10, Electrostar, ICE 3, DB 101. Now that weve gotten your attention, its time to celebrate: all of these beautiful train types are available in Train Simulator 2013, fully detailed down to the very last rivet. Its all aboard for fun when you take the conductors chair, ensuring that your passengers make it to their stop on time. With a huge stable of DLC trains available, its guaranteed that youll never run out of things to choo-choo-choose from.

BlazBlue: Continuum Shift EXTEND

Anime fighters dont get much better than this. Arc System Works, the developer of the legendary Guilty Gear franchise, works wonders with high-definition sprite work, retaining all the dustloop-combo magnificence of their previous work while giving each character their own unique attribute. Besides the intense 2D brawls, theres a wealth of plots to uncover and cutscenes to watch, all of it hand-drawn in a beautiful style.

Theres also many systems at play during the match that hardcore fighting fans will appreciate. For instance, the original Burst system has been expanded to include the Gold and Green Burst moves. The Green Burst will come in handy if youre a defensive player, as it grants you temporary invincibility when youre in a jam. Provided you can utilize your Heat Gauge with some skill, youll be unleashing Distortion Drives, Rapid Cancels, Counter Assaults, and Astral Heats in no time flat.

NARC

The title of this 2D-arcade-game-turned-3D-shooter has a double meaning. NARC could be a reference to the word narcotics, which are psychoactive drugs, or narcs, your friends who give you up to law enforcement in order to spare their own hide. Youll never know who to trust when youre playing, and it might raise some suspicions about substance abuse in the real world. Are cops secretly pocketing the drug paraphernalia they confiscate? Are the other cops onto you? Could they be scoping out your neighborhood, or approaching your door at this very moment?

Bubblegum Kush and Granddaddy Purp

Now that you know what to play today, what are you still doing here? Lets take a deep breath and get ready to game on!