Back in 2017, an indie title called Cuphead spurred a massive interest in games made with a classic cartoon art style. Developer Fumi Games channeled a similar retro charm, fusing classic 1930s rubber hose animation style with the black and white seedy underbelly of noir. Does Mouse: P.I. For Hire crack the case, or is it a mouse in sheep’s clothing?
This Cheese Stinks
Mouseberg, 1934. Jack Pepper, P.I. is busy walking the streets looking for his next big case to get a tasty handful of cheddar. Racial tensions are running wild, the police can’t be trusted, and politicians will happily count your fingers while shaking your hand. It’s a seedy and dark life hidden in the shadow of the bright lights, and you’re going to experience firsthand just how dark it can get.
Our hero perfectly manages to balance cynical one-liners with surprising bouts of optimism as he confronts his own demons stemming from his time as a beat cop and his service in a war prior to the events of Mouse: P.I. For Hire. Looking beyond the lead character, the supporting cast of this game is brilliant and, as you would expect, also manages to tie beautifully into the grander narrative. They all hit the archetypes, standards, and tropes you would expect from the genre and bounce off the grizzled and pessimistic Jack Pepper nicely.
Mouse: P.I. For Hire does a fantastic job at presenting a story that fans of games like L.A. Noire or films like Chinatown are going to fall in love with. Several seemingly unrelated events all beautifully weave into one engaging tale. The pacing is practically glacial, but such is the curse of the genre. If you are willing to strap in and pay attention even through the slower segments of this tale, you’ll be rewarded with a masterfully written story that, despite being carried by mice, hits with all the weight of the big boys of the noir genre.
More Attitude Than Those Mice From Mars
Mouse: P.I. For Hire was advertised as a “boomer shooter”, which has become the overall encompassing term for retro-inspired first-person shooters, distinguished from military shooters like Call of Duty or a more modern movement-based shooter like Doom: The Dark Ages. While it does share some similarity with games I would consider “boomer shooters” such as Ion Fury and MULLET MADJACK, it has its differences which, for better and for worse, make it worth examining primarily on its own merits.
As it belongs to the FPS genre, you would expect it to have a healthy stack of weapons and Jack Pepper certainly brings the boom when it comes to this. You get 1930s-inspired handguns and a Tommy gun called the “James Gun” before you acquire slightly wilder weapons, such as a gun that fires paint stripper that causes enemies to revert to skeletons before death. The weapons are fun and diverse enough, and all of them manage to remain relevant throughout the campaign, especially since you can upgrade them with collectables. Sadly, it does commit an unforgivable sin with having a terrible shotgun, which while not the worst I’ve seen, just lacks the weight and feel of a really good “boomer shooter” shotgun.
All Kinds Of Cheese
Despite being set around the city setting of Mouseberg, the level design is surprisingly diverse. You do have to suffer the genre standard sewer level, but you also get some great levels such as the creepy lab and the film studios, which allowed the developer to go really wild with the theme. Seeing you jumping between sets and movies being filmed in the latter is a genuine high point of the game.
There are some interesting elements of player choice in Mouse: P.I. For Hire as well. Several levels have different routes you can take if you look around the world, puzzles that require notes for you to find, and even full optional secret areas that reward you for taking time off the beaten path and using your keen P.I. senses. The game also has some forced combat arenas that seem to be the style of the time for throwback shooters.
There are also several upgrades you unlock throughout, such as a grappling hook and the ability to hover slowly using your tail; being a mouse clearly has its advantages. There are also plenty of safes for you to unlock, again using your trusty extra appendage. These allow for little breaks between the onslaught of hired goons and other nasties you’ll be facing throughout the rather lengthy campaign.
Batter Up!
Other distractions come in the form of a hub area where you can talk to members of the cast and play a baseball-themed card game which allows you to use cards you find as collectables to whittle the hours down in this frankly addictive mini-game. I have very little knowledge of baseball, but the game explains the rules of the card game well enough that you’ll be playing with skill in no time.
Alongside your main objectives for a level, you can also get side jobs from the characters in the hub world which range from getting pictures to finding hidden collectables. These in turn offer you more unlocks for your weapons or even more baseball cards. There are also a few collectible little figures, which are one of a few cheeky throwbacks to the more recent Doom games which I really enjoyed.
Unfortunately, even without all this, the pacing as mentioned is quite slow to allow time for its tale to be told. This detrimentally makes the game feel like it outstays its welcome a bit. Weapons take a while to unlock, and the old-school design attitude behind it really doesn’t help its initial 15-hour run time, an amount which is doubled if you want to find and unlock everything. And while I loved my time with it, if you compare it to the “boomer shooters” it’s been likened to, it doesn’t do enough to keep the full campaign feeling fresh for the run time.
Lookin’ Good Jack!
The first thing everyone notices about Mouse: P.I. For Hire is the striking art style, which uses a 1930s-inspired cartoon aesthetic and monochrome color palette. This game from start to finish is in black and white. It makes for a wonderful stylistic choice that not only leans into the early film animation style but also beautifully fits the narrative tone. It’s like you’ve stumbled across a forgotten noir film that just so happens to be carried by a cast of rodents instead of grizzled gangsters and other undesirables.
The animation on the character sprites is beautiful; they are 2D cartoon sprites, like a playable version of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The enemies react to damage brilliantly and, as mentioned earlier, the gun that strips them down to their skeletons is an absolute highlight. The cartoony animations fit the style beautifully and are naturally done to fit the game.
Sounds Good Kid!
The music is all jazz and big band themed and fits the tone brilliantly. Even the more action-packed segments have such a unique but fitting tone to them. It shows that you don’t always need metal or electronic dance music tracks when everyone is throwing hands, and the bullets are flying around with reckless abandon.
The voice acting is suitably “cheesy” with the vocal talents of Troy Baker doing a serviceable job as the protagonist that ranges from traditional Troy to an almost convincing Max Payne imitation. Other voice actors include Rhiannon Moushall, James Alexander, and Rich Keelbe among others; they’re by and large incredibly familiar with video game voice acting and really lean into the fromage required to keep the story going, but with all the cliches that the noir genre brings.
Performance Report
Regrettably, this would be a much higher recommendation from me if I had played it on another platform. I took the game on with the Nintendo Switch 2, and while the game looks amazing, the second you move, the frame rate will wildly jump between 60 fps and 20 fps without much of an obvious reason as to why. It seems a little more stable in action scenes, and then BAM you’ll just hit a random section which stalls the game. It suffers from really weak performance in many spots, and I am praying that the developers have a wonder patch up their sleeve.
Verdict
Mouse: P.I. For Hire was a really enjoyable, albeit drawn-out, experience that sadly suffers from horrendous performance issues on the Nintendo Switch 2. I loved the art, loved the story, and the action held up for the most part throughout. You might not get as much out of it though if you don’t have a love for the noir genre, or you want something more akin to its tighter “boomer shooter” peers.
When Mouse: P.I. For Hire wandered into my office, I knew I was in trouble. The look, the action, it was all there. Hiccups aside, this is one case I was glad I took on, and here’s looking at you kid for the future. All I can say is “Forget it Jack, It’s Mouseberg”.
MOUSE: P.I. FOR HIRE IS RECOMMENDED
If you are looking for another first-person shooter, you might want to check out Gal*Gun Returns.
Many thanks go to PlaySide for a Nintendo Switch 2 review code for Mouse: P.I. For Hire.
Pride of utopia & greatest thing ever, I found the One Piece, Collected the Dragon Balls & won the Mortal Kombat Tournament in one night, it was quiet for me that night! Follow me on Twitter @powahdunk
