REVIEW | MOUSE: P.I. for Hire

I remember when MOUSE: P.I. for Hire was revealed and instantly caught not only mine, but everyone’s attention. After all, it’s not every day you see an FPS that mixes 2D and 3D with a 1930s rubber hose animation style. We weren’t sure what we were going to get, but it certainly seemed unique. So, without further ado, let’s get into the details of this detective shooter, shall we? WARNING: This review is full of spoilers about the contents of the game, so if you plan on playing it, I strongly suggest you skip to the end of the review.

Things I liked!

• Guns-Blazing Gameplay | First things first, I want to be very clear that MOUSE: P.I. for Hire is primarily a boomer shooter. What does that mean? It means you’ll be using a substantial arsenal of weapons to clear a path and move forward, with ADS (aim down sights) unavailable. While it does have an interesting story, the gameplay is the main focus, with platforming, health bottles, armour, cheese for some healing on the go, plenty of secrets, and collectables scattered around, as well as weapon upgrades being available. Collectables consist of baseball cards, Jack Pepper Funkos, comic strips, and newspapers.

• Unique Arsenal | Every good FPS has to have good gunplay, so it couldn’t be any different here. Through the course of the game, you get to unlock an astonishing 11 weapons. There are the standard weapons that behave as expected, such as a pistol, a machine gun, a semi-auto shotgun, dynamite sticks, the loose cannon, which is a cannonball shooter, and, of course, your fists.
  
  However, there are also some very unique weapons, such as the devarnisher, which shoots acid and slowly burns your enemies; the kiss kiss, which is a double-barrelled shotgun that applies fire to enemies; the hellrazor, which is a bone chainsaw straight from hell; the jar-head, which is a brain in a jar that shoots a circle that stuns enemies on impact; the portable freezer, which, to no one’s surprise, freezes regular enemies, making them die in one hit; and finally, the secret weapon that can be unlocked once you win 20 times at a baseball card minigame, the X1 D-Mousifier, which is a ray gun.
  
  Most of these weapons can be upgraded, unlocking an alternate fire that makes them quite useful in different situations, reducing recoil, upgrading their damage, and upgrading their fire rate.

• Enemy Variety | The enemies in MOUSE P.I. consist mostly of mice, in all shapes and forms, such as melee, shotgun-wielding, pistol-wielding, machinegun-wielding, sniper rifle-wielding, flying, and running mice. They come in different sizes as well, with shrews being tiny mice whose melee variant can be defeated with a single shot or punch, regular-sized mice, robust mice, and a very big one that runs towards you and can take quite a few bullets. These previously mentioned enemies come in corrupt police, criminal, robot, cult, BMP (Big Mouse Party), skeleton, diver, and even demon varieties. As for other animal enemies, there are alligators and dogs.
  
  There are quite a few interesting boss fights, such as an opera singer, an alligator with a gatling gun, a scientist who operates a submarine, a cultist who destroys the floor you’re standing on, a ghost mouse, and another 13 bosses.
  

• There’s So Much to See | There are many different places to go, with a total of 24 levels, with side objectives in most of them, which helps so much with variety. There’s a circus where an elephant fell on top of another performer, making it a crime scene; the police station; a movie studio; a secret lab; two different ships; the docks; the swamps; two mansions, one with many cultists, a small village, and a cemetery; an underwater level, including a submarine and docks; a level that starts at an insane asylum and has you going through different dimensions, including hell; and an airship. In these levels, you’ll find many explosive, acid, freezing, and burning barrels to assist you in combat, as well as hanging objects that, once shot at, fall on enemies’ heads, killing them with a lot of ease.
  
  
• Abilities | You unlock quite a few abilities while progressing through the campaign, most of which are tied to movement. These abilities consist of double jumping, gliding by using your tail, just like Tails does in Sonic, using your tail as a whip, much like Indiana Jones does with his whip for traversal, wall-running on specific walls, and climbing specific walls. The non-traversal abilities you have are only activated in specific parts of the game, such as when you eat spinach that makes you extremely strong, both visually and melee damage wise; drinking what I assume is tea, which lets you use a finger gun that has unlimited ammo and does quite a bit of damage; and you can also eat peppers from gumball machines if you choose to do so, making every shot do burning damage to enemies.
  
  
• References Everywhere | I encountered quite a few references to many different media, including Star Wars, Indiana Jones, The Wizard of Oz, The Swamp Thing, Sleepy Hollow, Ghostbusters, Alice in Wonderland, James Bond, Resident Evil, and even a fan of the game is immortalised as a character in one of the movie studio levels, which was wholesome to know about. I’m sure I’ve missed quite a few references to other media, people, and baseball players as well.
  
  
• Baseball Card Minigame | Apart from being a collectable that you can find or buy, baseball cards are also used in a minigame available in the hub areas. In this minigame, you play through ten rounds, half of them as the batter and half of them as the thrower. It’s a pretty simple minigame where the card with the highest number wins, but you can use other cards to improve your player speed, increase their power, or stop a batter from running. I’d say you should only invest in playing this if you intend to get the already mentioned secret weapon it unlocks after winning 20 times; otherwise, you should at least try it out, as you may have some fun with it.
  
  
• The Sounds of the 1930s | The soundtrack in MOUSE P.I. consists of plenty of jazz, with the piano, saxophone, and drums being the main instruments at work. It gives the game the proper feeling of the moment, whether it’s a mysterious moment where you’re investigating and talking with key characters, or the moments where you’re fighting off all of the wrongdoers of Mouseburg. When you start and end a fight, you’ll hear the classic boxing ring bell, making it easy to understand when you’re in a fight, and there’s a heavy emphasis on drums, certainly giving you more adrenaline for the action.
  
  The sound effects are also pretty nice, giving the guns an extra feeling of power, and other sound effects, such as when solving a mystery, progressing through a lead, and even double jumping, have a fitting classic noise that you immediately associate with what just happened.
  
  
• Interesting Lockpicking | While some games have you simply push a button for lockpicking, others are more varied, having you physically move your lockpick to pick said lock. MOUSE P.I.‘s lockpicking reminded me of one of the most unique puzzle lockpicking minigames I’ve seen, it being Bioshock‘s. While in Bioshock you rotate pieces to connect a proper path to the end, in MOUSE P.I. you use your tail to manually go through a simple maze-like board, making you avoid obstacles, activating all of the pieces of the lock, and reaching the end. Some of these are timed, others give you limited movements, a few do both, and others do neither. They were all a welcome change of pace from the action for me, and gave money or blueprints as rewards.
  
  
• Great Classic Visuals | It took me this long to talk about it, but it’s finally time. The rubber hose cartoon art style was an extremely well-made choice, as it definitely helped draw many people’s attention to this game. It looks very good, with many great animations that I’m sure took a long time to get done, feels like a proper 1930s cartoon, and fits the journey through all the crazy cases and levels you play. It’s clear the developers have put a lot of work and love into the making of MOUSE P.I., as there are many drawn individual frames, likely hundreds, if not over a thousand. They only made 3D assets of what they needed to, as this is a 3D FPS, but it does fit the whole aesthetic quite nicely.

Mixed & disliked!

• A Bit of a Mess | I really loved playing through MOUSE P.I. and enjoyed how much variety there is. But I cannot deny that so much variety came at a cost for its story, as it has so many plot points, conspiracies, and so much happening in each case that it’s hard to keep up and make sense of why you’re where you are sometimes. It’s not a bad story, but it does seem like it was made to fit the available levels, and not the other way around.

• Some Nitpicking | I do have some minor complaints, such as being able to go on top of a used cannon that’s not available anymore, making you stand on top of an invisible wall, and invisible walls getting in the way of what seemed to be perfectly valid shortcuts in levels. They do make fun of invisible walls as a museum exhibition at the end of the game, so I forgive them for that. I also wished there was a way to replay levels to get all missed secrets and side objectives without having to replay the whole game.

How long did I play the review before publishing? about 17 Hours
How long to beat the story? 12 – 15 Hours
How many Achievements did I earn before publishing? 27/34 – 745/1000G
How long to achieve 1000G | 20 Hours +
You’ll love this game if you like these | Doom, Warhammer 40k Boltgun, Forgive Me Father

CONCLUSION

Score: 92/100

MOUSE P.I. for Hire is a true work of love that mixes a great art style with a very good soundtrack and gameplay, making it not just one of the most unique FPSs I’ve ever played, but one of the most unique games I’ve ever seen as well.