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Hey there everybody.  Finals week got you down?  Need a little break from that paper looming over your head?  Then try using the internet for what it was intended for.  No, not researching 16^th century French architecture for your art history final tomorrow.  Distracting yourself with mindless, pedantic games to keep you from getting anything even remotely productive done!

While not doing anything remotely productive while studying for finals, I was playing Civilization V as Germany (led by the great Otto von Bismarck, not that weird guy with the puny mustache) and the year 1939 rolls around.  What do I upon this fateful year?  Immediately invade Warsaw, and burn it to the ground.  I didn’t even notice the historical coincidence until four or five turns later. What? Stop judging me, it made good strategic sense at the time. Anyway, here’s a guide to the best distracting, potentially sketchy, computer games to play instead of studying for finals:

• God’s Playing Field:  This is a cheap little flash game I found a while ago that is great for de-stressing.  Did you get a bad grade on your final you studied and stressed over for weeks?  Stop writing that Facebook rant about your professor and play this instead! I myself would recommend the pillar of fire and the raining piano punishments.
• Popcap Games:  While they’ve now mainly moved into paid downloads, Popcap Games still has some fun stuff up online that you can play for free.  They’re light, fun, and incredibly addicting.  Talismania still remains a personal favorite of mine, and it’s also the reason I was late with my last political science paper.
• Stormwinds: For those of you out there looking for a more long-term distraction, Stormwinds (and the subsequent sequels) are pretty fun.  In this tower defense game you get to set up a defense and shoot down a lot of enemy airships.  There’s even a gun that lets you shoot lightning!!…If, you know, you’re into that kind of thing.
• Drawception:  This, a lot of coffee, and maybe one or two caffeinated beverages of questionable legality and contents, were just about the only things that got me through studying for my IB finals last year.  This is a little like Draw Something, in the sense that yes, there is drawing.  What you do is, well, draw something, and put it up online.  Someone else then interprets your drawing, posts that interpretation as a prompt for someone else to start drawing, and it just goes on down the line and…you know what?  Just go to the site, they explain it much better than I do.
• Slender:  This is not so much a recommendation as it is a warning.  The game is free to download and it technically has a simple objective.  You need to find eight drawings scattered in the woods at night.   The problem is that the Slenderman is following you around, and it is creepy as hell.  It’s a great scare, not for the faint of heart.  Do not play this game in a pair of pants that you particularly like, if you catch my drift.   All of that aside, if you like a good pop-out scare once in awhile, I’d highly recommend the game.