Mouse PI for Hire Review – Boomer-Shooter for Cheese-Lovers – WGB

Mouse PI For Hire is one hell of a cheesy mix: a boomer-shooter at its core, morphing into a 1930s black-and-white cartoon featuring a noir detective in a world of mice, rats and shrews. There’s a lot going on, but let’s go through it piece by piece, shall we? All you really need to know is that it tastes great and looks amazing.

Troy Baker lends his voice to the main character and private investigator Jack Pepper and does a solid job as the noir, world-weary noir detective who also happens to be the star of a Saturday morning cartoon. The script does an equally good job of balancing those two opposing themes, creating a fun noir vibe that does justice to both the dark detective stuff and the gritty cartoon stuff. Work the gouda especially into the spoonfuls of cheese. At first, the amount of cheese jokes being thrown around is tiresome, but the writers persist with finding more cheese-based metaphors and turns of phrase and it’s funny again.

The story drags you down a trail of conspiracy theories, mad scientists, corruption, and the dirty movie industry. In other words, it touches on everything a noir story should really be, all set against the backdrop of a seedy, crime-ridden city. Jack has a case to solve, and he’s going to drop all the cheesy quips he can while doing the job. Will the story have you on the edge of your seat? Nah. But it’s a fun thread regardless.

It’s a shame that a game about a private investigator skips the detective part, though. Between missions, you return to Jack’s small office on the 2nd floor and pin all the clues found on the board. But then there’s no careful linking of directions or plotting the next step—where you’re going next is announced right away, and off you go. That seems like a missed opportunity for some fun.

Obviously, the main selling point is the beautiful visual style of Mouse PI For Hire. Front and center is the early 1900’s pipe animation style, from the exaggerated breathing images to the way the joints bend and move as if they were made of…well, water pipes. While the world is in full 3D, enemies are presented as incredibly detailed sprites that rotate as you move, a nice piece of old-school design that I think was needed to make the animation work. There’s a lot of amazing detail, too—a skeleton standing after melting an enemy, eyeballs blinking on a pile of ash; this helps make the game more interesting.

Combined with a black and white noir vibe to complement the narrative. Part of me would love to see the whole thing brought to life in bright colors, but the black and white combined with the animation gives it a great early 1900’s cartoon aesthetic.

The developers started out as a cartoon house, so the good looks make sense. This is a team that knows how to make things look good, and Mouse PI For Hire is truly amazing at times. But that raises an important question: can a developer just jumping into the game development side of things make something that’s not only beautiful to look at, but fun to play?

That presentation does a lot of work, melting over the game like a delicious fondue. Take it away and what you have is a competent, fun, but surprising shooter. You run, you gun, run from time to time while blasting enemies with bullets and blasting simple death barrels.

I wish the arsenal you have was as innovative as the art style, though. Instead, we have a standard rifle, a shotgun, a shotgun and a machine gun, with only a few other weapons offering anything new or different. The acid globe gun was probably the standout feature, and the second most useful weapon behind the tommy gun. Unfortunately, some of the unique weapons are too bulky to be of much use in normal combat, though the game is simple enough that you can pull them off if you don’t mind the lengthy combat.

Weapons feel great to shoot, and there’s an upgrade system where you spend schematics found scattered throughout the levels. This would add some cool alt-fires, and I like that the weapons change, too. Yes, I’m a fan of that kind of thing.

The gunplay has a nice, fast pace to it, and the game gradually opens up its areas so you have more room to move around and use a few extra abilities, like grappling hook and tail navigation. There are natural kills to consider too, including being able to drop a hanging piano on enemies from time to time, and simple death barrels scattered around as the HR department goes on vacation and leaves the local drunk in charge.

But the enemies are a little lacking, apparently having eaten so much Swiss cheese that their brains are now full of holes. They run into blokes who charge you, and blokes who retreat and shoot at you. That’s all. They don’t wander around, try to use nature wisely, or anything else.

Basically, it’s a skilled run-and-gun action that lacks enemy variety and brains, or anything that would set it apart, but it’s fun. Under aged cheddar, and a block of basic bitch you bought from Tesco. Is it the best? No! But it still makes bangin’ cheese on toast.

There is also a lot more talking than you would expect in this style of shooting. I don’t mean this as a criticism or a good thing—just an observation, and a warning to those who just want to shoot things. Between levels, you go back to your own little area and chat with certain characters, and even on the mission there are usually a few NPCs to mess with.

With such a stunning visual style, I went into the game thinking it would be a very short experience—maybe 5 or 6 hours of gameplay. To my surprise, it took close to 15 hours to cover almost all the content on offer. Admittedly, though, towards the end it was starting to get hard to hold my attention. The shoot had lost its luster, but thanks to the vibes I stayed till the end.

Judging from the gameplay alone, Mouse PI For Hire isn’t going to be anything special, a run-of-the-mill boomer-shooter. But that wonderful 1930’s cartoon aesthetic and cheesy noir writing takes that fair gameplay and turns it into something memorable.