Games you should play on 4/20

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.

But hold up. What games are you gonna play today? Listen, we got you covered. These games are perfect for this particular Saturday. They have dope graphics, sick gameplay, and theyre mad fun. Trust. If you want to feel out of this world today, play these games. You know what we mean. Enjoy the ride

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!

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.

Dialogue trees are where the actions at in a game thats this plot-driven, and the straightforward puzzles give you some breathing room between the gut-wrenching drama. It turns out, humans can be as awful and repulsive as reanimated corpses--a lesson that Lee and Clem wont learn the easy way. This is truly an adventure game for the ages.

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.

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.

Those who would rather not use a mouse and keyboard are welcome--just plug in a controller, and youll be good to go. The graphics are gorgeous, and online leaderboards let you challenge all your Steam friends to races against the clock. Whether you want to build up your career or drive a train for the fun of it, youre sure to discover your inner train conductor with this lifelike sim.

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.

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?

If they are, theyre probably here to kill you, judging from the actions of the player characters in NARC. Drug users--no matter how minor--are fair game in the gore-filled, blood-soaked shootouts that take place on the city streets. If you or anyone you know partakes in the stuff, you wont be going to jail--youll be going to Hell.

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!

Want to relive more 4/20 highlights? Check out What if Hitler smoked pot? and The 6 greatest pot reefer-ences in gaming history.