Mouse PI For Hire Review
I was wrong about Mouse PI For Hire because when I first laid eyes on it at the start of 2023, it looked like nothing more than a prototype. Simply a shallow attempt to cash in on Steamboat Willie going into public domain.
Mouse finds itself at the intersection of modern prestige and boomer shooter. Mouse is equal parts Doom, Metroid Prime and Cuphead. The art direction and aesthetic does the obvious heavy lifting, but the narrative, writing, performances and gameplay pick up the slack when they’re required to. Mouse PI for Hire is extremely polished, full of originality, and oozing with personality like a cheese fondue.
The underlying criticism was that there were too many inconsistencies from the erratic difficulty, the time between new weapons, abilities, or mechanics and the second act could’ve been more refined, which would’ve led to a more impactful experience.
I’m happy to be proven wrong about Mouse because one rebrand and three years of development later, Mouse doesn’t use the1930’s animation aesthetic as a crutch, but instead to elevate the rest of the experience into one of the finest first person shooters of the modern era.
85
If you want to see our full review with more nuance, continue reading below or watch the video
MOUSE-TROID PRIME
In Mouse PI For Hire, you play as Jack Pepper, former WW1 war hero, who now finds himself the corruption filled city of Mouseberg, now making ends meet as a private detective. What begins as a seemingly simple case of a vanishing magician quickly turns into a web of crime that will take you all across Mouseberg as you follow leads, gather clues, and kill a lot of bad guys in unique ways.
Mouse is overflowing with the boomer shooter essentials including fast paced gameplay, extravagant arsenal, no aiming down sights, lots of strafing, loads of hidden items and so much more. It was also clearly inspired by Metroid Prime as missions were a satisfying blend of shooting, puzzle solving as platforming as Jack slowly gains abilities throughout his investigations like Double Jump, Grapple and many more. Jack also uses a camera to take pictures on the crime scene similar to how Samus scans the environment with her visor. You will also find clues on each level and at the end of the day, Jack takes all the evidence back to his office and pins it on his board hoping to get clarity and figure out how it’s all connected.
You’ll get to and from Jack’s office by hoping in his car and heading to the overworld, where you can drive around freely, which was always a joy as the world felt alive from the cows grazing in the fields to the subway passing through underneath. The areas that you can’t access yet are wrapped in chains and locks and as they slowly get removed during the adventure you get a sense of satisfaction and it helps build build anticipation as you reach the end of your investigation. Considering the monotone aesthetic, most of the areas have their own personality from the swamps to the Hollywood hills inspired movie sets to the nuthouse and even some that you have to see to believe.
Despite being about an anthropomorphic mouse detective in the 1930’s, the narrative was a highlight with a prescient story about corruption that’s given depth due to the world building and the performances of all of the characters, in particlular Jack, which is another thing that I was wrong about. When Troy Baker was cast as Detective Jack Pepper the value wasn’t apparent to me. Troy is a very talented voice actor, but I’m typically indifferent to his performances. In my opinion, Troy brings an incredible amount of personality to the character in what is likely one of his strongest performances and is a large part of what makes the narrative engaging. There are loads of tongue-in-cheek jokes including ones about the Star Wars Prequels or Soul Asylums Runaway Train hit single that wouldn’t have landed if not for the extremely dry delivery Troy gives.
Finally, you can’t talk about Mouse without talking about atmosphere and that begins with the stunning art direction, which is the reason the initial trailers for the game went viral. It’s hard to stay focused on the objective at times as you just want to soak in the world and look at everything. It’s obvious that the team poured themselves into creating Mouse and had fun doing it. The commitment to the tone in Mouse is admirable as it stays very true to the era with a fantastic smooth jazz soundtrack, costume design, and how the characters speak right down to their pronunciation of words that feels era authentic.
Mouseberg is also full of intricate details that give Mouse such a large personality. The way each reload animation looks, how the end of the gun barrel bounces up and down staying true to the rubber hose animation of the era, how the record scratches as you pause the game or how his main pistol is called the Micer instead of Mauser, the WW1 era it was modelled after.
UNSOLVED CASES (CRITICISMS)
The underlying issue with Mouse was how many inconsistencies it had across the board. This ranged from the pacing, to the difficulty and how often you would get new weapons, abilities, and gameplay mechanics. Mouse is borrows a lot of elements from the metroidvania genre as you’re slowly given new skills as the adventure progresses. The more abilities you’re given, the more variety the game offers as it became less about just shooting everything and implements platforming much more frequently. Unfortunately, the back half of the game is loaded with most of the new guns and abilities that you will find, which makes the second act of Mouse feel a little monotonous as you will use a lot of the same weapons dispatching a lot of familiar monster closets.
Outside of the occasional erratic difficulty spike, Mouse was fairly easy even on the hardest mode. For the most part, death in combat was never much of a concern. Only near the end, when the developers started to throw everything that could at you, but that felt like more of an artificial difficulty as you’re often unfairly overwhelmed. This also carried over to the safes. Cracking a safe with your tail was fun, but it never provided much of a challenge. There are certain safes that will become permanently jammed if you screw up while try to crack it, which heightens the tension and I wish more would have had fail states or much less time to solve them. There was never anything mission related in them, so there wouldn’t be a drawback to it.
MOUSE PI FOR HIRE VERDICT AND SCORE
I went into Mouse looking for a great shooter with a 1930’s rubber hose animation aesthetic that struck the balance between retro and modern. The last thing I was expecting from an anthropomorphic mouse detective was a prescient narrative about politics, conspiracy and corruption that was made digestible with enough cheese puns to make anyone lactose intolerant.
Falling short of perfection, Mouse falters as the second act lingered too long, which exacerbated the pacing inconsistency as time between new weapons, abilities and gameplay ideas felt extreme at times. The difficulty was also erratic as it struggled to find the balance between overwhelming and cakewalk, but when you factor in the extremely fluid gameplay, extravagant weaponry, fantastic jazz soundtrack, excellent performances across the board, then you’ll never want to leave Mouseberg.
With plenty of modern touches and a strong narrative, Mouse isn’t another cliche boomer shooter, it’s now the blueprint for how to do them properly.
