Hey everyone, I just wanted to give you all the heads up that I will be gone on a week long backpacking trip in Jasper (near the Rockies) & will not be around to answer questions or comments during that time. I will be gone from the 27th to the 2nd; depending on how my guide comments you are subscribed to, you may get spammed notified on the 3rd when I play catch up & reply to everyone.

On that note, before I go I plan to releases my Arkham Knight guide either sometime on Thursday or Friday. Part 1 is fully edited, & I am just wrapping up working on the final AR Challenges; though I probably won't be able to personally earn the Requiem For A Killer Achievement for myself right away... I will have to chip away at it. But that won't effect the guide; I know what to do (put in the guide) it is just a skill issue on my end. Regardless I hope to have it released by the end of the week.

Despite what I said about not working on a guide while initially playing Elden Ring... I lied I guess & couldn't help myself, so the Elden Ring guide is officially in the works. In between NGs (there will be three) I will also start Blasphemous 2 as well as Doom 4 (2016) during that time. The Elden Ring guide won't be released for a while since I am taking it really slow & enjoying it for myself, but it will be done at some point for this year.

A potential monkey wrench in my guide schedule is going to be the release of Gears of War: Reloaded mid August. I have been waiting for the Gears of War trilogy to come to Steam for a very long time; I never actually thought it would since it is owned by Epic. If there is all the online Achievements... I probably will hold off, as I am sure you are all well aware of "Seriously" Achievements for these games. But, if it is purely all Campaign Achievements, then I plan to fully jump in & start working on it as I have been longing to go back to Gears for a while. Highly unlikely there won't be some form of online inclusion for this game though...

To avoid confusion, this post was initially about something else, but that has now been resolved. I really appreciate everyone's support & understanding.

Hey everyone, I hope your 2025 has been going well so far! Things are looking to be pretty busy for me this summer with my day job, which is a good thing technically. The company I work for is essentially re-booting all the community wildfire response plans we do for most of our clients, so I will be spending quite a bit of time outside re-assessing the forests around them over the next few months. Ironically though, I am not sure if that will reduce my gaming/guide writing time; I actually find I am a lot more motivated to game if I have been in the field than if I have spent the whole day in the office.

With Assassin's Creed 3 finally done, I have some items on the list I will immediately get started on, & try to potentially forecast what other guides I might cover for the rest of the year.

Days Gone - Broken Road Update: In less than 12 hours, the new DLC expansion for Days Gone is dropping which added in 6 new Achievements to the game. Nothing I hate more than having to come back to a guide for new Achievements, but these fortunately seem mild & won't derail my initial guide for it. I will be picking up the DLC as soon as it launches & plan to crush it/update the guide before the end of the month. Days Gone is pretty peak & having to re-beat it a third time will not be a chore...

Arkham Knight: When Days Gone is updated, yes, I will be finally returning to Arkham Knight (which I know I have basically been saying I would for the last year... I haven't touched it since this time 2024). But Arkham Knight is a promise guide for this year, might still take me a bit since I am 1/5 of the way through. But once that gruelling first Collectible playthrough is completed, everything else should go relatively quickly. My immediate goal is to get that first playthrough done, potentially take a break to work on Blasphemous 2, or ride the wave as long as I can.

Blasphemous 2: With the Mea Culpa DLC dropped, & potentially nothing else on the horizon, it is finally safe for me to commence work on Blasphemous 2. I have beaten once already on an alt playthrough (have never tried Mea Culpa yet) so I already have a good idea of how I want to tackle it. My biggest conundrum for Blasphemous 2, is instead of linearly collected Relics that allow you to access Collectibles that function is tied to the different Weapons, which depending on the Weapon you start the game with first could mean Collectibles are immediately available or not until you collect that Weapon later... from a guide writing standpoint it makes it tough, because I essentially have to structure the guide around WHAT I PICK. I think I know what I plan to do about it though, but it does add an extra level of awareness I have to keep track of as I play/write of what Collectibles are accessible when & by who.

Arkham Knight & Blasphemous 2 are guaranteed guides for this year. I would also still like to cover the Crysis series (with the Doom series slotted for next year) & potentially starting the Dishonoured series. If I don't cover Dishonoured, I will probably opt to complete other series I have mostly done such as Darksiders, Witcher, or Saints Row. I also have a few indie games I am working on in the background that aren't really worth mentioning & will sporadically release throughout the year.

Halo - Master Chief Collection: I officially started working on writing a guide for the Master Chief Collection & am planning to cover a game per year - this year I am doing Combat Evolved. The plan is to do a separate part per game as well to keep things organized, so it will be a 6 part guide - if you are familiar with MCC it makes a lot of sense to do it this way. What I am not sure of however is how I plan to release it, if I will drop the parts as I complete them, or if I will wait until the entire thing is complete. Something I will have to think about, it would be easiest on me sitting on the guides in case any cross-game Achievements mess things up... but 6 years is a long time to be sitting on what will be hundreds of hours of work for me.

Lastly, & this is a question for those who know MCC, for the LASO Campaigns, do you think they should also be covered in their associated game guides, or should I save all LASO Campaigns for a separate Part 7 guide? Is it easier to tackle LASO after 100%ing the other Achievements in their associated game while you know the Levels or is it easier mentally to attempt all LASO's sequentially? If I save the LASOs to the end, I can definitely get through the games faster, but I am not sure that is the optimal way to attempt 100%.

As a new announcement, I have finally also saved enough money to replace my 2015 PC with a brand new 2025 PC, so at long last I can comfortably start covering newer game releases. Jedi - Survivor is high on my list to finish the Jedi series... but more importantly I have 0 excuses anymore to not cover Elden Ring. If I can get through Arkham Knight, I promise I will pick up Elden Ring & make a guide for it - depending when I start it, it may not be finished by the end of the year.

There is also a good chance I may do a guide for the new Oblivion Remaster (Oblivion is my all time favourite ES game & is so much better than Skyrim in my opinion) but... it would almost be a token guide as it has very basic Achievements that don't really require a guide. All you need to do is complete the Main Quest, Faction Quests, & Shivering Isles DLC & nothing is missable. The guide is inevitable since I can't play games by myself without making a guide in the background, & there is no way I am not playing it, just depends if I jump on it right away or not in favour of working on Akrham Knight / Blasphemous 2.

As a semi unrelated aside, & this is a special exception as I am a Steam exclusive, but I have been asked by many people over the years to make a guide for Bloodborne. I bought a PS4 day one in 2015 specifically for Bloodborne & know it like the back of my hand. There are ways to release guides on Steam... that are not Steam games, so that isn't an issue. But of course, this would only help the niche group of Playstation people & be of no use to the larger community. It is something I am willing to do (post Elden Ring) but if no one is interested, I won't bother since it is outside my scope technically & I don't plan to cover any other non-Steam game.

Happy New Years, Hunters! I wish you all the best for this year & hope that you are all able to crush at least 5 100%s. It is looking to be a good year for new games!

2024 was sort of a set up year for me in terms of guides & I am not entirely happy with how little I got done. That being said, the amount of "in progress guides" I have at the moment is massive. While not much may have been released, I still have been very busy. Between January/February this year, I have 6 guides that will be released before I do my next tour of Arkham Knight (which WILL be released this year!). Some will be interesting to most of you, & some will be more niche; as you know, I have never really chased trending games & sort of just made guides for games I currently want to play/100%... which sometimes backfires & eats up a lot of my time.

That being said, once my backlog is cleared up, I plan to get a lot done this year (which I promise every year). I am not doing too bad with my day job, & depending on how things are looking come tax return time, I will be finally investing in a new PC so I can run newer games. It won't stop me from working through my massive list of older games I want to cover, but I can also cover newer games like Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption, Cyberpunk, Wukong, Baldur's Gate, & so many others I have been missing out on.

If you have not already seen it, I have started a new tab in the Group Discussions dedicated for other Hunter's Achievement Guides. If you are an aspiring 100% Achievement Guide writer, I implore you to start a Thread & post your work there. I am wanting this Group to be a hub for Achievement Guides, & not just revolving around my own. That being said, I do have a few rules posted in that Discussion & you should read them before posting anything!

Lastly, I also want to send out a truly appreciative thank you to everyone who has been supporting me on Buy Me A Coffee over these last two years since I started the page. It honestly means the world to me, & I truly hope I can one day achieve some semblance of a living making guides (that doesn't rely on donations). I have loose plans, but at some point there is a "leap of faith" one has to make into content creation, & I am just not there yet.

Regardless, 2025 is going to be a good year for us, & I am looking forward for what is to come! Happy Hunting, everyone!

Hey everyone, I just wanted to give an official & big happy shout out to all the new members to the Cynical Guides group! 100 Members! Welcome! At the moment, there isn't a whole lot happening with this Steam Group outside of my little updates on guide progress & interacting with you all in the comments. As of now, I will try to make an effort to be present in the Group Chat. I work off of two computers (PC for gaming, & a separate laptop for writing my guides at the same time); if you see me in game, I will also make an attempt to have the Chat open. No false promises as I am pretty introverted, but I do encourage discourse or conversation (of course being decent human beings, I've got no mods).

As I mentioned earlier today on the main Group Comments, I have nothing to release just yet but have around 10 or so guides in progress at the moment & I am hoping to release at least 4-6 of them by the end of the year. Three to be released in November, then December is a bit of a wild card.

Unfortunately/fortunately, a lot of my day jobs work for the winter ended up falling through to "upper level bureaucracy" & a lack of funding for the projects I typically oversee. The fortunately part of that... means I in theory have a lot of time to do gaming/guide writing if I can keep myself motivated. As it stands, I have plenty to keep me busy & many in progress guides piling up over the four years I have been doing this. However. With this potential* good chunk of guide time I am faced with two dilemmas that I would like your input on:

Arkham Knight: I am currently around 1/4 of the way through the Akrham Knight guide. I put in a good 60 hours into it way back in April of this year, & I am 3/4 of the way done the first playthrough & getting all of the bajillion Collectibles. I maybe have another 10-15 hours left on the first playthrough. The first playthrough is the longest part of the guide, as NG+ is a basically a speedrun just to finish it. The DLC Episodes are short, though there are a few of them, & then it leaves the gruelling Challenges gauntlets per every character that these games are notorious for.

I can spend December as a dedicated Arkham Knight game & see if I can put another 60+ hours into it to either finish the game/guide or be very close with only a few of the Challenges left I need to chip away at... or.

Elden Ring: As you all know, I have been promising an Elden Ring guide since the day it released in 2022. It has been long enough since Shadow of the Erdtree (which didn't add Achievements) that I am confident I can safely make a guide for the game. This is a game I have never played once yet, & as a long time Fromsoftware fan, I have been dying to play it. However, this will also be the very first "Souls game" I have written a guide for that I have not already beaten many times over & I am not totally sure how I will approach making a guide in an efficient while also spoiler free (for myself) process. I have been doing this for long enough though, that I should be able to do it with only minor spoilers.

Elden Ring will be a huge & difficult guide for me to make due to how large some of the Areas are for describing where to find Achievement related Items or Spells. I also plan to (try to) make it as spoiler free for the reader as well. All this means, is that it will take me a while to get through.

So the dilemma is: should I stick to finishing Arkham Knight, or do I put it on hold to start another large project, Elden Ring. Personally, I am fine with either option as both are most certainly getting done; which ever I finish first, the other will be slotted for the winter/December of 2025. Let me know below if you have a preference!

Without overextending my promised guides for 2025, I plan to get the whole Dishonored series & Crysis series completed amongst many other "swappable games/guides" depending on how I am feeling throughout the process. With Dishonored & Crysis done, I will then move on to the Deus Ex & Doom series for 2026... Somewhere in between those (or near future & beyond), I plan to cover Mafia, GTA, Assassins Creed, Borderlands, Starfield, Divinity – Original Sin (& then Baldur’s Gate 3), God of War, Nioh, Kingdom Come Deliverance, Monster Hunter, Xcom, State of Decay, & Tomb Raider amongst many many more.

Once again, thanks for supporting me for so long & I look forward to many more years of putting out guides. I definitely intend to be doing this for a while, if not forever!

Hey Hunters, so yes I have been working on guides this whole time... just way less so then usual. Darksiders 2 ended up being so much more intensive than the first game with over 100 Collectibles I had to make descriptions for... & now 50 hours in I realize that there is a mandatory NG+ playthrough I have to do. That shouldn't be too bad in theory as I can reduce the Difficulty, blast through up until I hit Level 30 then finish off the game blasting through the Crucible. So it is almost done, & will be released this month.

Dead Space Remastered is also more than halfway done - I am close to finished NG+ which only leaves the intimidating Impossible Mode/One Gun playthrough, but once I start that I plan to just blast through it. So potentially that should also be released this month as well if not early September.

My guides for Brink & Saints Row 4 are actually already edited & finished, but since those are pretty "low hype" games/guides I was just planning on sitting on them until I had a more exciting guide to release along with them. If anyone was interested in having these guides put out early, I'd happily oblige as I can just do that in an afternoon. Otherwise they will be released at the same time I put out Darksiders 2 or Dead Space Remastered.

As for what's next... I am not totally sure. With my initial slate cleaned, I will most likely do my next push through Arkham Knight & hopefully get the massive first playthrough completed. While I do this, I think I will work on Witcher Tales - Thronebreaker as a game with very different gameplay as a "palette cleanser" when I need a break; this will also fully complete my guides for the Witcher games (I don't plan to touch the Online Gwent game).

Blasphemous 2 & Skyrim are guaranteed to get done this year as I am very excited to play them. Ideally I will also get Darksiders 3 done as well, but with how the second game went, I am a bit leery with how large a game that one is. Other potential guides will be Borderlands 1, Assassins Creed - Origins, Saints Row - Gat Out of Hell (to finish the series), & now randomly the Final Season of the Tell Tale Walking Dead game due to there being missable Collectibles in it (it was suggested to me). That Walking Dead guide will most likely happen since I have never played these games & heard they are amazing - so now I have an excuse to. Problem with that though is I will need to burn through the first three Seasons before the Final Season, & the first three do not require guides. But just means I can actually play a game & not need to worry about breaking it down into a guide...

One thing I can no longer guarantee is if I can manage getting Arkahm Knight out this year. I am already 50 hours in (gameplay only, not including guide time) & I am halfway through the first playthrough. The biggest part of the guide though, but I imagine I still have at least another 100-150 hours (gameplay) to get through the entire project. I probably have another 20-30 hours left in the first playthrough, NG+ & the DLC Episodes will be a breeze, but of course the Riddler's Revenge Challenges could take a while. Remarkably, I don't actually mind these anymore, & I actually beat the Challenges in Arkham City faster than I did when I was doing Arkham Asylum somehow. So it is a bit of a coin toss for Arkham Knight; they did add an extra two Characters you have to earn Medals on though & a brand new Batmobile Racing Challenge...

One final monkey wrench into all of this, is the field work of my day job is finally coming online (when it ideally should have in April). So I may have a lot less time for gaming in the next couple months until "the snow flies" & I can no longer do survey work. Which technically is a good thing for me, as funnily enough given my hobby, I am a garbage office worker & prefer working outside.

So bear with me this next little while, those guides are coming & I do still plan to hit over my standard "12 guides a year" for this year.