I don't even try to play multiplayer games anymore, as within moments I get the feeling of time wasted. I do however, from time to time, play single-player games (like Portal, or Modern Warfare series, or more recently, Bioshock) for their artistic / story value. The best games have stories much better and deeper than most of the movies, so I find them important intellectually and artisticly.
I'm not sure if this is up your alley, but, the game 'Spec Ops: The Line' is one of the most intellectually stimulating games I have played in a long while.
Spec Ops: The Line is one of the first games I've really seen traverse from the collection of descriptors we normally use for video games (childish, immature, time waster, brainless fun, etc) into the realm of what I'll call "deep media". I'll define deep media as the collection of literary and artistic work which is created not with the primary goal of entertainment, but with conveying an outlook or a perspective of the world.
Spec Ops: The Line is not a pretty, nor particularly fun game, but by golly is it good.
Spec Ops: The Line is not a pretty, nor particularly fun game, but by golly is it good.
That's probably a good indicator of deep media. Not whether something is entertaining, or was created for entertainment, but whether it can be considered good regardless of entertainment value (ignoring technical value, which is generally only useful to a small subgroup of consumers).
SpaceChem is awesome, I played it a lot on PC and also now on tablet (it's more playable with mouse, though).
Also worth checking are all other games by Zachronics Industries (maker of SpaceChem)[0] - I particularly liked "The Bureau of Steam Engineering", where the goal is to route steam via pipes, valves, etc. inside a mech to make it fight other mechs.
