Oooh, boy. I’ve got a lot to say about this one, folks. For starters, this game was made by BigFryTV, a notable gaming personality. Now I could sit here and bash Bigfry on a lot: I can point out how he shilled for Payday 3's disastrous launch, then talked mad ♥♥♥♥ about his fans who were calling him out for it instead of just manning up and admitting from the jump he screwed up. I can point out how he says he's tired of AAA gaming, yet paid money for Battlefield 6; how he hates when he gets censored by indie devs, but yet bought Red Dead Redemption 2, published by Take Two, arguably one of the most anti-consumer publishers around. I can point out how he acts like he's God's gift to gamers, implying gamers are so stupid and unable to decide for themselves what to play and what not to play, hiding behind the convenient canard of “quality control,” something his buddies like SidAlpha (Cleveland Mark Blakemore did nothing wrong, by the way) and precursors like Jim Sterling had. I can point out how Bigfry referenced SteamDB in one of his videos, a site that shows that every single "asset flip" he talked mad ♥♥♥♥ about (deservingly, mind you, but still) had literally nobody ever playing them, and rather than put the spotlight on actual quality games, BigFry decided to pick the lowest hanging fruit instead because his audience is, let's be honest, lazy and want everything done for them. It’s never been that hard to find good games. Hell, if you’re really so hellbent on this idea that “the Steam store is all garbage nowadays,” why not just play retro games? Fire up your favorite emulator and go to town, right? But of course, Bigfry and his audience are an indictment of how fickle gamers are; I am reminded of the days of gamers being giddy when Obsidian/InXile were bought by Microsoft. Because people believed they would have more resources (aka money) to make games than having to rely on Kickstarter. Or the times when people were disappointed and complaining about a free game on the Epic Games Store being an indie title rather than AAA. People won't admit it but given the choice they'd rather have a AAA game with all the high-fidelity graphics and production values. And that's why Bigfry is how he is: deep down, he couldn't care less about how "dead" gaming is: it's because to him and his audience, gaming is just AAA slop factories. Indie games are like the women who get told by a guy he loves them only for him to laugh as he always goes back to his wife. Rinse and repeat.

But this review isn't about Bigfry's grifting, hypocrisy, all around tryhard attitude. It's about Transience, a game that, let's face it, we all bought so we could see once and for all if Bigfry could actually walk the walk. I mean, I want to base this review on the idea that, despite everything, it takes cojones to put your money where your mouth is and to try to make something yourself.

Problem is, all Bigfry put into this game is his hot air. The game is about as well done as a chicken cooked by Jack Scalfani. Remember the AVGN's line in his Drake of the 99 Dragons review? The bit where he says "This game is what you get if somebody ate every badass dual-pistol wielding, trench coat-wearing late '90s action movie cliché, then barfed it out..."? That's what Bigfry did. He didn't make a real character - there is nothing here you haven't seem so many times before. Main character, much like a Redditor, has his head so far up his ass, I'm surprised he can even see what's in front of him; as such, the story is the lamest collection of generic cyberpunk tropes imaginable, to the point that you could literally predict the story scene by scene as soon as the game starts with Generic Action Hero on the train. Bigfry even said it himself in one of his videos - it's a hodgepodge of all his favorite things in media, and that's fine, really. This is a video game, a glorified kids' toy, not a Pulitzer Prize winning novel. Unless you're playing Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri or the first Deus Ex, where story is paramount, then most of the time, it's not too big a deal, but in this game? It comes off as completely cringey, as the kids say. It makes me wonder how the guy can even see enemies when his head is so far up his own ass with trite "cool" platitudes. Wow, man, the American Dream was a lie all along? Damn, man. It sounds a lot like Bigfry's own idea of content - "hey, guys, this early access slop nobody even heard of until I mentioned it is bad, 'mmkay?" - in that regard. You don't feel like you're experiencing a living, breathing world, and like, I don't think every game needs a story, but come on; 'Fry, I get you're a fan of certain properties, but come on, try not to make it so obvious - you're taking a sledgehammer to our noses here: are you Triple H? Don't do campaigns with cutscenes and big narratives that you don't have the resources to make, it's that simple.

But, of course, the cardinal part of any game is, well, the gameplay. And my word, it's exactly what the critics say it is: the AI is a literal cakewalk. There is no challenge here. There is no substance. It's like the AI of Rome 2 on release - just completely useless. This is not at all the kind of AI you want in a game made by someone who talked as much ♥♥♥♥ as Bigfry has. This is the kind of AI you find in the asset flip slop that he built his "career" (lol, I'm sorry, but get a real job if you're serious about this, Fry, come on) upon. I spent most of my time in the holdout mode and like that one review says, it's easy to cheese the AI. Like, really bad. It looks exactly like the shoddy AI one finds in one of those asset flips Bigfry made videos about.

Overall, this game doesn't really serve any purpose except to show how for all his talk over the years, Bigfry just can't really deliver. Neither can the Fry Nation, either - my SteamDB extension shows as of writing that four people are online now, with a twenty four hour peak of nine and an all time peak of three hundred seventy nine people. Exfil actually draws more numbers. Even in owner estimations, too, and I never even heard of Exfil until Bigfry recently whined about its developer in a video. Don't believe me? Here's, as of writing, Transcience's numbers:

~10.4 k by VG Insights
~13.5 k by Gamalytic
~27.0 k by PlayTracker

And for Exfil?

~31.7 k by Gamalytic
~63.6 k by VG Insights
~116.7 k by PlayTracker

Like, this is basic information anyone can find in five seconds, but Bigfry cultivated an audience of deplorably lazy dweebs who can't think for themselves without an e-daddy. They will go blue in the face to tell you SteamDB must be, like, lying or something. But this isn't about them. This is about the fact that for all of Bigfry's bluster about how "gaming is dead, d00d!" (no, it isn't) and how "devs these days, man, especially in the tactical shooter community, man, they don't get it right," he ends up churning out a half-baked at best game with shoddy AI, banal gameplay, a real Frankenstein of a story, and most of all, the dude literally spent more time flexing to dunk on TinyPenguin than he has on actually, y'know, fixing any of this.

Now I know Bigfry or his simps will probably take issue with this review, but in the end, I'm sorry, you can't just peddle a bunch of lies and tryhard promises for so long and expect people not to take issue with it. Plus, in the end, unless you're Volound, a literal unicorn in the gaming space (since he doesn't take sponsorships, doesn't shill, doesn't settle for AAA slop factories like EA and 2K) as someone who actually has some degree of conviction about him, I think this game only goes to show that gaming YouTubers are to video games what BookTokers are to literature: the only people left because they drove off everyone else desperately holding onto like Japanese holdouts after the war.

Continue to hold out against the doomers who poison every well they see. Don't buy this game. I took the bullet so you don't have to.

Very great game with amazing AI in my opinion, hard to find good AI like this in a lot of games. The story is well designed, although slow at first it gets very good. I will say on the underwater nightclub level, the optimization could be better. It was a very fun game, and I think BigFry did an amazing job on it.

Game acts like its noir but the main protag is just rude, not apathetic. Plot acts philosophical but is about as deep as a puddle. Turned off 10 minutes in after seeing how much of an obnoxious asset flip this game is. 20 bucks worth spent somewhere else