MOUSE: P.I. FOR HIRE

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nrmJSgqYTI

I must come clean in the preamble to this review. I am not a noir nut. I do not bask in the depictions of grimy alleys of corrupt cities, in the stories of down-on-their luck retired police officers turned private eyes to wrench free from a rotting system. Not that I dislike it or hold any animosity for this pulpy treasure trove of tropes. Gosh I do love pulp! Just this particular genre of it never caught my attention. But I do know Boomer Shooters. Oh yes sir or madame, I sure do know these, playing games since I was a little scamp back in the 90s, I encountered and played them all. And their revival was a blessing, bringing back the most important part of gaming that a lot of games in the 2010-2020 era sort of forgot – that games should be fun, first and foremost.

See I am a fervent believer that the brutish rush towards maximum realism was a detrimental shift in gaming as a whole. Oh, sure, nothing is black and white, and there are definitely some positives to that shift. We got higher fidelity than ever, some realistic, gritty, down-to-earth stories with robust, adult-centric writing that doesn’t treat their audience like morons. That’s neat. But at the same time this push to hyperrealism stripped gaming – at least with the big boys of the industry – of its whimsical touch. Of its zany spirit and wacky premises that boldly tell you “Yeah, this is nonsense, but it’s a game, so why do you care? Go bash some zombies or whatever!”.

MOUSE: P.I. FOR HIRE put a smile on my face by being that kind of game. A game that wears its silliness on its sleeves, proudly displaying them with relentless, upbeat spirit. It’s choked to the brim with references; it makes puns so frequently that they stop feeling like jokes and its moment-to-moment gameplay is dedicated to a rather high energy pacing you’d expect from an older shooter. Bah, more of its design is coded like The Good Old Games! Stages, secrets, unlockables, lack of microtransactions… Like a fine cheese, the formulas here never go stale, but rather crystalize into a sharp, piquant new flavours!

Here's a real high-class bout!

Let’s address first the worldbuilding in question, the presentation. See, for me Boomer Shooters sit on a very firmly divided spectrum, a slider. On one end you have grim and gnarly ones, filled with gore and greys and focused on carnage and brutality. Think PRODEUS or CULTIC. Then on the opposite end you have your goofy goobers games – sure they can still be rife with mindless brutality, but it’s more played for gags and guffaws. DUKE NUKEM comes to mind instantly, with one-liners, over-the-top guns, mutated pig cops and wacky scenarios. Or SERIOUS SAM, even though some purist would rather put it on arena shooter shelf. MOUSE: P.I. FOR HIRE is absolutely sitting on that end, firmly clutching it with all its might.

The world of mice, shrews and rats is a cheesy place. Everything is cheese related. Fondue is a stand in for alcohol. Cigarettes? No, cheese sticks! Our protagonist, Jack Pepper… well, you should just google Pepper Jack and see what comes first in the search. Every other sentence contains some sort of cheese pun, the world in question is littered with it on every corner. Then, we have the rubberhose animation, a beautiful rendition of that early cartoons’ era visual language.

Everything is bouncy, everything is brimming with energy. Animations are robust, kinetic, lovingly goofy and unserious. Even your guns act more like noodly contraptions, swaying like wet spaghetti, bouncing with your movement. The attention to details is most respectable and admirable. Upgrading your weapon add new thingamabobs to it. Each weapon munition type is displayed in a corner with a lively expression and a bounce. Enemies die in variety of goofy sequences, turned to piles of ash when roasted by fire or dissolving under acid.

Introducing your secular shotgun to the cultists that do not believe in being shot.

I would consider myself part of the club that consider reference humour to be the lowliest of its branches. It is, ultimately, cheap to just point a finger and say, “remember this!?”. It’s pandering to nostalgia with little effort. And yet… I cannot fault MOUSE: P.I. FOR HIRE for using it with such brazen vehemence. There are no stops here, they embrace it with a puffed-out chest and a bellowing holler. Everything is a reference! Popeye, Disney classics, Cuphead, Metal Gear Solid, Bonds movies, Ghost Busters, the deluge is unending and even my low opinion on such humour is swept in its waves. It’s fun, yeah, because it’s well executed – seeing such mentioned twisted through the lens of this game grayscale art style and amazing animations just put a smile on my face.

It helps that the voice acting is stellar, too. The best way to sell proper goofiness and wacky setting is being dead serious about it. After all, the characters who inhabit such realm would not consider it humorous or strange. It is their commonplace every day, and you can hear it here. Serious deliveries, rich personalities, fantastic cast of characters with their own agendas and deeper lore to fill their ink-made souls with life.

But I think that’s enough glazing on the craft itself. Just take it from me – the art style is bold, the execution – fantastic. It’s easy to fall in love with the cast of fun characters and sink in deep with the game aesthetics. Great music adds to the atmosphere, fitting each level well, and the variety on display here is also quite delightful! From underwater romps to spooky castles. From Hollywood glitzy parodies to shady underground slums. There is really no repetition here, so every stage feels different and laying down its own story. Great stuff.

But… how does it play? Here there are a few hiccups. Not many, but still enough to recognize. Let’s start with the good stuff – MOUSE: P.I. FOR HIRE is a very competent boomer shooter. It starts a little slow with just a few guns at your disposal – all classics of the genre, pistol, shotgun and the two guns the Rodent God gave you in form of your fists. You unlock more, and as the game progresses, the weaponry gets increasingly zany.

Upgrading weapons unlock their alt-fire modes as well as scale them up for progressive difficulty levels later in the game.

Devarnisher shooting gobs of acid, freezing ray, mind-gun that pops noggins, you name it. Each weapon has a selection of upgrades that keep it relevant as the difficulty scales, adding alt-fire mode to spice the gameplay up, too. It’s a well-designed system – you will never have enough blueprints to upgrade everything as you progress, but the game clearly wants you to check out all guns, find a couple you like best and stick to them, upgrading them first to enjoy them to their fullest.

Problem is, I barely ever had to switch weapons in the game. I played, initially, on Normal difficulty. And that’s a misnomer, because it should be called babymode goo goo ga ga ultra easy mode. Didn’t die once during combat. Most encounters I barely ever lost any HP to begin with. Stages are littered liberally with munition pickups and endless health potions, so you can’t really run out of ammo or, well… die in a fight, unless you really, really fumble constantly. If this isn’t literally your first ever shooter, I suggest ramping up the difficulty to the highest one, to feel the impact of enemy hits and bullets.

Ah yes, the enemies. Don’t get me wrong, I like them, and their roster – while small – is well thought out. You have big beefcakes with lots of HP and a charging move. Regular goons, shooters, snipers, little fellas carrying bombs, flying harassers… It’s a solid selection. But it’s not too robust, and you can feel the repetition setting in about midway through the game, yearning for some new fellas with new twists to tackle on. It helps that they have some visual variety, between corrupt cops, gangers and cult members, but this is mostly decoration – a guy with a shield acts the same, no matter what garb he is in now. Even when undead a goon with a gun is just a goon with a gun. Sufficient, but lacking. Enough, but craving more.

Picking up a stage by driving your car around the town is elegant, fun and immersive.

What does help the game pacing is almost Metroidvania-like unlocks of various mobility abilities. You will get more traversal bits added to your kit and follow up arenas will generously add proper bits and bob to enable you to use them to kite an ever-growing mob of thugs. Double Jump, wall running, grappling tail… Add to that a dash and slide that is a part of your baseline kit and our detective is quite a spry mouse! It feels good to play with all those movement options to tackle a combat encounter, making it feel energetic. And the player feels in control of the situation.

And so, the combat is… perfectly serviceable. Did it pump my blood with flood of adrenaline? No. Did it bore you to tears? Also no. It’s fun when it happens, the progressive difficulty is well paced and the expanding arsenal gives you some options to experiment with combat, but ultimately, it is not bringing to the table anything fresh enough to be jaw-dropping. A fun romp is all it will ever be. Perhaps that is enough!

Now that sounds like a big detriment to the game – a boomer shooter that isn’t challenging or exciting during combat sounds a little lacking, eh? There are, however, two great saving graces for this game. First is exploration. I love it and was scurrying around every nook and cranny like a rat in a maze looking for that bit of cheese. There are secrets to find, safes to lockpick with your nimble tail. Baseball cards to nab for the minigame, statuettes to collect, cash to earn, blueprints to score. There is like half a dozen of more secret areas in every stage and finding them, for the most part, was always exciting.

Tammy is just one of the many fun and complete characters to encounter on your adventure.

And the second bit was surprisingly the story itself! I never expected a goofy cartoony game, so thick with pans and references to tell a compelling narrative, but here we are. Sure, it’s not God damn Shakespear, but it has more chops than I expected. Multiple cases that join and overlap at the edges. Some deeper lore to each character… remnants of old wars, memories of grim past emerging from the murky surface. Racial commentary about the oppression of shrews. Corruption in politics and entertainment, journalistic integrity on the line… Redemption and vengeance, all touches upon. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I would strongly suggest not skipping any dialogues; they are as funny as they are compelling to the plot and story development. I was engrossed from start to finish.

And so, here we are. MOUSE: P.I. FOR HIRE is no masterpiece. It lacks in some places; it oversteps in others. Constant cheesy deluge might tire some players. Lack of difficulty might bore some others. But those aren’t big, glaring failings that diminish the game too much – it is still a hilarious romp, always energetic and engaging. With its stellar animations, superb voice acting, robust level design and compelling storytelling… It is, simply, a time well spent and I had a sweet sense of satisfaction upon completing the game. A sweet feeling of time well spent.