Mouse: P.I. For Hire sees you playing as Private Investigator Jack Pepper in the 1930’s. The story starts with you in your office when a woman named Wanda summons Jack to investigate the disappearance of Steve Bandel, whom Jack served with during the war. What follows is a plot in which Jack investigates several cases that ultimately appear to be connected in various ways.
Mouse: P.I. is mostly a “boomer shooter”-style FPS, which has more in common with Doom Eternal than with something like Bioshock, in that the combat demands constant movement. Standing in one spot for more than a second or two will see your armour and energy vanish so fast that you won’t notice it’s all gone until you see the Game Over screen. That’s not saying it’s overly tough, though. If you keep moving, then the combat is quite forgiving.
Jump Right In
The story takes place over 20 levels as the story evolves, and between each one, you get to go back to the office. This acts as a kind of hub area where you can upgrade your weapons with the blueprints you can find throughout the levels, or buy ammo and missed collectables. You can also play a game of Baseball Cards (a minigame played with baseball cards you collect, but it’s ultimately a bit too simple to be deep or challenging, as it’s just a case of who plays the cards with the highest numbers wins).
The hub also allows you to talk to various NPCs to get the occasional side mission. These are usually just collecting something or taking a photo, nothing that will open up new sections or the mainline story.
Style & Charm
The standout feature of Mouse: P.I. is its graphics. Black & White throughout, it employs a “rubber hose” style of animation, similar to the kind seen in cartoons of the time. Cuphead is the closest video game comparison.
As well as the B&W look, there are options to add film grain and degrade the image so it looks more like a 1930’s cartoon. I didn’t use these options because I found them distracting, but they did look good at the same time.
The music is just as good, with a decent mix of big band and jazz, both original music and tunes you will instantly recognise, like “The Entertainer,” for example. There are a few instances where I feel the music didn’t quite match the action on screen, however, like the aforementioned Entertainer. When it does play, it’s in an area where I just didn’t think it fitted, mainly because Mouse: P.I. had just taken you through an area where it would have worked so much better, and there was an area shortly after where it would have worked well too, but that’s a minor quibble.
Sound and speech are just as you’d expect. The guns make the right noises, the cast of characters have voices that fit them well, and Troy Baker delivers another trademark performance as Jack, providing commentary on both the story and the action as the game progresses.
Here’s Looking At You
As much as I really enjoyed the story and game in general, there are a few problems. First of all, I feel Mouse: P.I. is slightly too long. If they’d just tidied the story up a little and reduced the game down to around 15 or 16 levels, the whole thing would have felt tighter, but as it is, it starts to drag towards the end, especially with the need to return to your office between levels to add clues to your board and interact with the various people you need to in order to advance the story.
Plus, at the time of review, there is no NG+ option. This feels like a massive oversight given the number of collectables throughout the levels, and the fact that you can’t go back and replay them once they’re completed. If you’re a trophy or achievement hunter, this can be a bigger issue as it’s also surprisingly easy to inadvertently go the right way while exploring and miss things. There’s also one level where you start next to a breakable wall, but the story demands that you can’t use your weapons, so you’re unable to destroy it. I never did find a way back to the start during the level, so I don’t know if there was a collectable behind there or not, but it’s lost until I start a whole new playthrough.
The Maltese Cheddar
It’s the same with locks. They’re simple enough puzzles where you guide a line through the lock and nudge pins out of the way. Unfortunately, some locks have an automatic fail, so if you mess up, then that’s it until the next playthrough, or you have to reload your save game. It’s a minor issue, but as some safes contain blueprints, it becomes impossible to upgrade all your weapons.
Speaking of which, you start off collecting blueprints pretty quickly, but then there’s a gap of around 10 levels before you get another one. I also found most of them to be a little more than a novelty. The majority of my playtime was spent using the Tommy gun, varnisher (which melts the ink off the characters) and the shotgun, but even that became useless towards the end. The other weapons were a case of using them to see what they do, and then rarely using them after.
We’ll Always Have Ammo
While I greatly enjoyed my playthrough, Mouse: P.I. For Hire is not perfect either. It’s a little too long, needs a NG+ option desperately and the ability to retry puzzles if you fail, or at least the option to replay a level once you’ve completed it. The combination of gunplay, exploration, and detective work is well-balanced, and it’s great fun to play. It looks fantastic too. Well worth at least one playthrough, and hopefully they’ll add NG+ mode, so it will be well worth a revisit too.
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, Xbox S/X, PC
Publisher: Fumi Games
Developer: Playside Studios Ltd
Played On: PS5
Code Provided By: Keymailer
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