Imagine Doom in the ‘rubber hose’ animation of Steamboat Willie, add in more references to mice and cheese than you could ever need, and a hardboiled detective in a neo noir setting and you might get close to Mouse: P.I. for Hire. You might also get a mish-mash of ideas that never cohere, and that’s also Mouse: P.I. for Hire.
The story follows Jack Pepper, a private detective in a world populated by rodents, as he follows a tip-off from Wanda Fuller, a reporter for the Mouseburg Herald. A magician has gone missing, but there appears to be much more to story than a simple vanishing act. The plot twists and turns with corrupt politicians, racial violence, and cults, all backed up with smooth jazz and wisecracks – all the ingredients for a noir detective story, and the tone is quite dark despite the cartoon visuals and endless cheese quips.
The main hub area contains your office, where you can pin clues to your mystery board, a pub, shops for weapons upgrades, the usual sort of thing. You can also talk to characters here, picking up new clues to further your investigation. From here you can head to your car, at which point the game flips to an isometric map and you can tootle along in your car to the next location. This is totally unnecessary, but like many of the small details, such as Jack humming the main theme tune as game loads, it adds to the charm.
At this point the game throws away any thought about being a detective as Jack goes full Nathan Drake in a black and white Boomer Shooter, murdering hundreds of other mice without a thought. Sure, they are the bad guys, but no one seems to have any issue with Jack’s killing sprees, and this felt quite jarring. I was reminded of the film Sin City, which is similar, if a little more adult, in tone, where every action has a consequence. There is no such levity in Mouse P.I.
Thankfully, it’s a pretty good take on the Boomer Shooter style. Your starting weapons are fairly weak, but there are many others to discover and upgrade, with some getting alternate fire modes. Your standard shotgun and pistol are present, along with cartoon-inspired guns such as the Devarnisher, which melts the ink from bad guys until they are skeletons.
It’s clear the 2016 Doom reboot is an inspiration; you zip round the levels at high speed, double jumping, hovering, and wall running to gain access to hidden areas, or dashing to avoid incoming fire. It’s fast, frenetic, and you really do need to keep on your toes. There are plenty of ways to kill enemies beyond blasting them with guns: classic tools such as anvils and grand pianos are suspended on ropes, ready to be dropped on bad guys’ heads, and typical exploding barrels pepper levels, ready to be kicked into the face of oncoming danger. By far my favourite is the can of spinach that can be consumed, instantly transforming Jack into a musclebound brute, complete with Popeye’s anchor tattoos on his arms. Potions that restore health are liberally dotted through each level, along with armour pickups, in fact there might be slightly too many as the game is quite easy on Normal mode and rare offers too much of a challenge.
Each location, all of which are rendered beautifully in 1930’s style cartoon visuals, follows a fairly standard pattern of funnelling Jack through corridors with a few enemies before opening out to a larger space for a bigger battle with enemies pouring out of doors. Along the way you pick up more clues before heading to a boss battle with an opera singer or crocodile, because reasons.
Overall Mouse P.I. is a competent and engaging shooter that doesn’t really offer anything original, but gets away with it because of the amazing hand-drawn visuals and big band sound track. The detective part of the game drives the story along, but as you can’t really miss any clues (some signposted with a bouncing magnifying glass), and you just pin them to the board while Jack recites some exposition, it all feels rather perfunctory rather than like a real investigation.
However, it does feel like the game could have done with an edit, as some themes, such as an analogy to racial violence, do feel very out of place with comically animated mice.
