With its black-and-white rubber hose animation, lively jazz soundtrack, and gripping detective noir setting, Mouse: P.I. For Hire serves up a refreshing 1930s-inspired experience in the seedy city of Mouseburg – a name that makes perfect sense given its population of anthropomorphic mice. Here, players control a gumshoe named Jack Pepper (voiced by Troy Baker), as he unravels an increasingly complex missing persons case sporting all the usual suspects from crooked cops and slippery politicians to charming socialites and tenacious reporters. This tale’s smart, humorous writing and enigmatic characters play into hardboiled fiction cliches in amusing ways that kept me hooked throughout the dozen or so hours it took to reach its high-stakes finale.
Despite casting you as a detective, Mouse shies away from letting you use your intuition to crack these cases yourself. It’s a largely guided experience wherein Jack automatically places clues where they belong on a board in his office and quests update with where to go and who to talk to next. I would’ve loved to do more of my own sleuthing to get to the bottom of things, but the game is primarily interested in its stylish action, for better and worse, so it keeps you consistently moving along to new, visually distinct locations.
Mouse: P.I. For Hire Video Review:
Levels range from opera houses to swamps to production studios, each overflowing with classic slapstick comedy. I frequently chuckled when glimpsing a web in a corner featuring a drooling, derby hat-wearing spider rubbing its knife and fork together while eyeing its catch, or when an enemy killed with an explosive barrel would break into a hilariously exaggerated death animation before crumbling into a pile of ash with eyeballs. None of it is presented as parody, either – it’s a sincere tribute to century-old cartoons like Steamboat Willie, albeit with more adult themes spread throughout.
Exploration is a blast, too, thanks to cool unlockable traversal abilities and plenty of secret areas with money and collectibles, as well as items or photographs needed to complete side quests you receive from the denizens of Mouseburg. These optional requests are worth seeing through, as they do a good job of expanding upon Jack’s various personal relationships and feature some of the funniest dialogue in the game. Still, my primary reason for checking every nook and cranny was to find extra baseball cards to use in an fun turn-based card game at the bar downtown. I lost a few hours and some in-game money on these strategic clashes, but I don’t regret a second of it.
The action combat lacks depth, however. The gunplay and movement feel fantastic, but too many enemies fall into one of two categories: “Guy with a blunt weapon who charges at you with reckless abandon,” or “guy with a gun who stands still and shoots at you.” As a result, most encounters lack the dynamism of other fast-paced shooters by which Mouse is clearly influenced (namely, Doom). Even with my growing arsenal of comical weaponry, a bit of fatigue eventually set in by the last third of the game.
Conversely, boss battles are the highlight, offering delightfully wacky and challenging showdowns that test all of your skills at once. One of my favorites featured a fellow who cycled between windows on various floors of a house, forcing me to line up timely cannon shots while simultaneously fending off his lackeys outside. Another required using a flashlight to deal damage to an apparition that flew around a graveyard before splitting into multiple copies to disorient me.
These moments, combined with the fascinating vintage visuals and music, make it easy to overlook the areas where Mouse wastes some potential. Sure, I’d have liked more meaningful investigative mechanics and fewer reskinned baddies, but I was often too busy tapping my toes to jazz tunes and laughing at the riotous cartoon antics to be too bummed about it.
