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Cynical Guides CG Hunters

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ABOUT Cynical Guides

Welcome, Achievement Hunters!

This is simply a safe haven for Hunter's to collaborate with one another & discuss all things Achievements. If you need help with a specific Achievement, need a boosting partner, or just want to gush about your favourite video games then head over to the Discussions tab!

I will also be using this Community Group for new updates & announcements on my upcoming guides & projects as well.

This Group is public for anyone to join, but there are some ground rules that if not followed will result in your Comment being deleted or a permanent ban from this community:

Racism, hate speech, sexism, extreme language, or any kind of discrimination is not tolerated
No spam content (begging for Likes or Steam Points, repeated instances of the same Comment, or "copypasta")
Do not give out any personal information such as phone numbers or passwords
No politcs!
Outside links to websites (for user safety)

Most of the rules are common sense: we are here for the love of video games & Achievements! Respect each other, & most of all, Happy Hunting!

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POPULAR DISCUSSIONS

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RECENT ANNOUNCEMENTS

March 2026 - The State of Steam Awards

17 March - Cynic 0055 | 4 Comments

I wasn't really sure if I would make a post about this, but having seen a few different takes by other Steam Guide creators I felt I may as well give my two cents. I recently came to a different conclusion that may be surprising.

For brief context, as most of you know, Steam has changed how Steam Awards work, & by extension, how you earn Steam Points. In the past, if someone gave you a Steam Award you would earn a small portion (maybe a quarter of what was spent on it?). With the new system the only way to earn Steam Points now is by spending real money on games. This was always an alternative, but now it is the only possible way to earn Steam Points. Unfortunately, they never increased how much yield buying a game gets you; having just spent $14 on Lords of the Fallen, I only got 1000 Steam Points which is roughly 70ish Steam Points per $1. If all Steam Awards cost 500 Steam Points... each Steam Award is technically costing you $7. Which brings me to my main point:

Stop sending me Steam Awards.

It just isn't worth it for anyone anymore. You are better off saving your Steam Points to buy Backgrounds, Emotes, or saving up for the Seasonal Badges which cost 40,000 Steam Points. 40,000 Steam Points will take you $57.00 to accumulate, though it may be significantly more (I don't think my Steam Point metrics are totally accurate).

Rating my guides is just as good, & more importantly, it is free to you. If you really want to show appreciation, leave me a nice comment; I always enjoy reading them, even if I rarely respond to them. Which I am sorry about; that balance is something I haven't really figured out. As a cheat code for getting me to respond, just tack on a question. I wish the Steam Comment system was a bit more nuanced & I could <3 them like YouTube Creators can so I you'd know that I saw it. In the past, I would actually send people Steam Awards & it was a neat way for me to track regular guide users. Give me a Comment, & I would send a "Superstar". Leave me a second Comment on a different guide, & I would send a "Treasure" & so on. Haha if you have ever wondered where random Steam Awards came from in the past, you probably Commented on one of my guides. But I can't do that anymore which is honestly what irritates me the most; I CAN'T give people Steam Awards either! Or at least not like I used to.

Either way, long story short, just please save your Steam Points for yourself. If you want to show support, Rating my guides or Commenting is the best way to do that now. Sorry for the rant, I don't mean to sound ungrateful either, but it has been bugging me for a bit now & I just wanted to air this out. I will be altering my text descriptor on my Profile page to say similar sentiments.

I really appreciate all the support you have given me over the years. I recently crossed the 1500 Follower threshold & we have over 500 member of this Steam Group which is just crazy to me. This should be a pretty big year for guide releases & I hope to get a lot done (I know I say that every year). As some my have seen, I have gotten a bit sucked into Halo - MCC at the moment & have broken my "2 Halo games a year" strategy. I may be completing the guides a few years ahead of schedule...

January 2026 - Happy New Year!

5 January - Cynic 0055 | 15 Comments

Hey everyone, Happy New Year! I hope you all had a great time over the holidays. I basically took the last two weeks of December off of work (& guides unfortunately) to spend with family & friends.

Sorry for the lack of progress & guide releases these last few months; as I mentioned in October I sort of started up too many games/guides & have yet to finish most of them. A LOT of in progress guides though... I think around 12 now in various stages of completeness. That being said, Blasphemous 2 IS finished as of a while ago, but it is taking me a really long time to edit it & create the Collectibles Maps for it. It ended up being 120 pages & has around 70 Collectibles Map... & I just got tired is all. Unfortunately I am only on page 50/120 so I still have a bit to go. But I will slowly chip away at it over this week & take all day Saturday or Sunday inputting it all into Steam to be released this weekend.

For the 2026 forecast, apart from the guides I already have going, there were quite a few good games on sale during the Steam Winter sale that I finally picked up for myself. As a few guaranteed guides I went to done for this year are: Red Dead Redemption 1, Jedi - Survivor, Cyberpunk 2077, Borderlands 2, Dead Island - Riptide, & most likely Batman - Origins (I am not entirely sure how to go about that one, but it has been highly requested for a really long time).

There are also a lot of other games I will be working on such as the next chunk of Assassin's Creed games, Crysis, & a few others. I never really know how I'll feel after finish this or that game, so I don't like locking down too much in case I need to pivot to a different genre for a break. I snagged the Last of Us over the sale, so I could potentially be covering them this year too.

Like I did with my old Half Life 2 guides & Shadow of Mordor, I hope to also try & remaster some of my older 2019-2020 guides to elevate them to my new quality standard. For this year I will most likely be tackling my Metro 2033 & Metro Last Light guides as they were some of my first guides... & kind of suck in my opinion. Fortunately, remasters are never that time consuming as I get to essentially follow my own guide through a 100% instead of writing it all from scratch & just re-writing or re-formating poor descriptions. Eventually I hope to go back to my Bioshock 1, Darkness 2, Shadow of War, & Dark Souls 2 SotFS guides & remaster them as well... My Final Fantasy 15, Dragons Dogma, & Nier Automata guides also need remastering... but those are very big games/guides & will be big time sinks, so I'll be saving those for last & probably just doing one a year or something.

That's about it. Business as usual for this year. I am officially back from holidays as of today & hope to get back into the swing of things & try to be more productive. Happy Hunting, everyone!

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Division

29 May @ 11:08pm

I'm also gonna be working on Alan Wake 1 and I hope Max Payne 3. Still working on the Saints Row 3 game as well.

Division

29 May @ 2:34pm

That's good, good luck with that.

Cynic 0055

29 May @ 11:23am

Currently I will be trying to invest more time into Batman Origins & try to get that finished for June. Then I am not too sure. I really should get back working on my Elden Ring guide so I may put in another 100 hours on it before I need a break. I started AC - Rogue way too soon after Black Flag so I didn't get very far into it before I needed to put it down. Might swap to AC - Unity instead.

Otherwise for this year I still hope to get Darksiders 3, Jedi - Survivor & Cyberpunk 2077 done plus whatever random games I decide to throw in there. Crysis 3 as well. Maybe Borderlands 2, but I might be filled up in "long guide slots". The Crysis games have been nice short guides to break things up for me.

Division

28 May @ 10:16pm

Hey Cynic, you 100% few games like KARMA and Crysis 2, what's next? I know I see the game collection you showcase indicating you're playing them, I'm curious what's next.

Division

24 May @ 10:23pm

I finally finish South Park: The Stick of Truth 100%. Jeez its a fun one.

Division

22 May @ 4:10pm

Yeah offensive humor in it are funny as always typical South Park fashion, the game should not be long at least collecting achievements and items even missables are easy enough.

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