Its easy to feel a bit beset by doom these days. The other week, I watched the heinous AI-generated Trump Gaza video and was so appalled that I impulse-bought a kayaking guide book. It felt like the only sane response was to take to the water and paddle away.Video games are a reliable antidote to existential doom, but layoffs, corporate homogenisation and AI slop are all encroaching on my safe haven, making it more difficult to get a brief reprieve from whats happening in the outside world. Thank God, then, for the Bafta games awards nominations, which reliably remind me that video games are pretty great, actually.The 2025 picks were announced last week (right after my newsletter deadline, as longtime readers will know is now tradition). In my opinion, Baftas event is the classiest and least commercial of the gaming awards shows, and its judging panels, with a mix of video game industry professionals and specialists from Baftas membership and beyond, usually come out with the broadest range of picks. I always see a lot of what I personally love about video games in these nominations: their sheer creative variation and vivacity. (Disclosure: over the years Ive been involved with these judging panels in various capacities, but not in 2025.)The eligibility period runs from November 2023 to November 2024, so there are no nominations for the superb Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. (I feel so sorry for great games that come out in December.) One of my favourites I played made the cut: A Highland Song, a magical-realist game about running through the Scottish mountains, is up for best British game, alongside another Scottish-set game called Still Wakes the Deep, a cosmic horror thriller set on a North Sea oil rig. Yorkshire-ish comedy Thank Goodness Youre Here! is also up for this award, as are Lego Horizon Adventures, Paper Trail and Hellblade II.Hellblade II is actually the most-nominated game overall, appearing in 11 categories. Still Wakes the Deep, meanwhile, appeared in eight, and Thank Goodness Youre Here in seven. If I may be allowed some very mild patriotism, Britains games industry should be very proud of its output last year, which was overall a horrid one for those working in the business of play.Personal fave Neva, a game about a warrior and her wolf, is nominated for an artistic achievement award. Photograph: nevaDelightfully, Thank Goodness Youre Here! made it into the best game category with Astro Bot, Black Myth: Wukong, Balatro, Helldivers 2, and Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, a game that I liked less, apparently, than almost everyone else. There are a bunch of big games here in various categories, but what I like about the Baftas is that indie games arent relegated to their own specific category: they appear everywhere, resulting in an enjoyably unpredictable slate. The stop-motion submarine puppet adventure game Harold Halibut and the warrior-and-wolf environmentalist action game Neva (a personal fave) are up for the artistic achievement award, next to big titles including Astro Bot and Wukong.The ambiguously named games beyond entertainment category is always my favourite to peruse, partly because of the nebulous definition: these are all games with some kind of message or intended wider meaning. We have Kind Words, in which you send nice messages to strangers or send your worries out into the world. Theres Botany Manor, about exploring the home of a Victorian botanist. Tales of Kenzera: Zau was informed by its directors grief after the death of his father. Tetris Forever is a fascinating interactive documentary about the block-arranging game, and an insight into a wild period of video game history. Hellblade is in there, too, presumably because of its portrayal of living with psychosis. And then theres Vampire Therapist, in which you are a cowboy talking the immortal undead through their emotional baggage. I had never heard of this game, and will be downloading it forthwith.Last years awards were so comprehensively dominated by Baldurs Gate 3 that the show lacked its usual propensity for surprises, but a lot of the categories this year are much tighter. The show is on 8 April at 7pm BST, hosted once again by comedian Phil Wang, and pretty much everything on this list of nominations would be a worthy winner. That said: if the gloriously clever and maximalist role-playing game Metaphor: ReFantazio doesnt win best narrative, Ill be fumin.What to playWanderstop. Photograph: Ivy Road/AnnapurnaWanderstop is game is about a formerly fearsome warrior forced to slow the heck down and run a whimsical tea shop in a fantasy forest, and she is not happy about it. Its also a game about burnout. Co-written by Davey Wreden (The Stanley Parable, The Beginners Guide) and Karla Zimonja (Gone Home), it will speak to anyone who has ever overinvested in their work and found the meaning suddenly stripped from their life when they can no longer work like they used to. (No idea what youre talking about.)Available on: PS5, Xbox, PCEstimated playtime: 10 hoursWhat to readA landmark for explorable 3D game worlds The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, from 1998. Photograph: NintendoInspired by a Bafta survey, I asked a bunch of interesting and distinguished people for their most influential video game of all time. No two people picked the same game. Most of their selections were so brilliantly esoteric that I felt distinctly boring for picking something relatively predictable.Sony has been experimenting with AI-powered game characters: an AI version of Aloy from Horizon was leaked to the Verge, talking to the player in a synthesised voice. Important reminder: Horizon is a story about how greedy technocrats destroyed the earth with the help of AI.Theres a new official trailer for The Last of Us season two, with Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsay returning as heroes Joel and Ellie. Those of us who have played the game will know there is, uh, plenty the trailer doesnt show And speaking of trailers, theres a 10-minute (yes, 10) trailer for Death Stranding 2, which will be released on 26 June. Being a Hideo Kojima game, it looks equal parts creative, confusing and utterly bonkers.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Pushing ButtonsFree weekly newsletterKeza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gamingPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionWhat to clickQuestion BlockTrigger warning for vegetarians Monster Hunter: World. Photograph: CapcomReader Robin provides this weeks question:Heres a question I cant get out of my head: how can you play Monster Hunter!? Im not squeamish at all but I could barely get through a training session, which involved hurting a harmless creature trapped in an arena I was disgusted and my son was horrified. Then some innocent creature lay dying and I was pulling silly faces and taking photos of the poor thing as it breathed its last. And if Monster Hunter didnt do it for you, what has prompted you to walk away from a game?This is such a valid question! I was vegetarian for 12 years and yet throughout, I happily cut down majestic creatures in Monster Hunter and felt proud of my achievements. I am so fascinated by this dichotomy that I wrote a whole article about it when Monster Hunter: World came out in 2018. Forgive me for quoting myself, but heres what I wrote:One of the functions of fantasy violence, whether in Monster Hunter or Game of Thrones, is to prompt reflection on the role that violence plays in the real world and in human nature. Monster Hunter might involve killing, but it also restores humans to the hierarchy of the natural world Perhaps spending hours of my leisure time pretending to be a hunter-gatherer-warrior is an outlet for the slavering carnivore within.I am not vegetarian any more, but I fully acknowledge the dissonance between respecting and admiring these incredible virtual creatures and then killing them to make fancy helmets. The latest game does a lot of cognitive somersaulting in its story to try to make out that killing these dangerous beasts is noble because we do it to protect people and the ecosystem. But on a base level, were doing it because its fun, and that is pretty gross on one level. On another: its fantasy. With absolutely no judgment towards fans of first-person shooters, I am personally more comfortable with killing virtual dragons than killing virtual people.On to the second part of your question: one moment in Grand Theft Auto V made me so uncomfortable that I had to fetch my partner to play through the scene for me. A scene in the story that involves a hillbilly psycho capturing and torturing a guy who is Middle Eastern. You have no choice but to actively participate, and it made me feel nauseated. Its obviously intended to be satirical commentary on the US governments immediate recourse to torture after 9/11, but it massively missed the mark for me.If youve got a question for Question Block or anything else to say about the newsletter hit reply or email us on pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.