Part-chaotic retro shooter, part-stylish cartoon noir, Mouse P.I. for Hire goes beyond its stellar artistry to land an invigorating, wonderfully imaginative hard-boiled romp.
Sometimes it’s the little touches that make all the difference, and Mouse: P.I. for Hire is full of little touches. There’s the way protagonist Jack Pepper absentmindedly hums the theme tune over the game’s splash screens before the main menu appears and the full-bodied jazz rendition kicks in. There’s the way every combat encounter starts with the ding of a boxing gong and ends with the clang of three bells when everyone’s down for the count. Or the way you don’t just warp between missions, but drive your little car across a beautifully animated isometric city map. Mouse P.I. is rich with this stuff, these fun little flourishes and labours of love.
I’m guessing you already know Mouse PI’s elevator pitch by this point, but just in case: this is classic Hollywood detective noir reimagined in the “rubber hose” style of ‘30s-era black-and-white animated shorts; part-Fleischer Studios, part-early days Mickey Mouse. Jack Pepper (brilliantly voiced by Troy Baker) is our grizzled protagonist; a wise-cracking, world-weary private eye in a seedy world of rain-slicked streets, slinky jazz, sultry femme fatales, fast-talking reporters, crooked politicians, mobsters, and shadowy cults. It starts like a Saturday matinee adventure, turning its tutorial into a daring chase across an airborne blimp, but soon winds time back to the moment the strange case of a missing stage magician first fell into Jack’s lap. And as the clues pile up, it’s clear something stinks in Mouseburg – and not just the cheese fondue.
Mouse P.I., then, is pure noir pastiche. And while its script doesn’t always nail it (there are occasional moments of awkward tonal dissonance as it clumsily summons the spectre of real-world atrocities it simply isn’t equipped to deal with), it’s for the most part a warm-hearted, wryly amusing affair, spinning a genuinely compelling mystery. And, of course, it’s all delivered with impeccable flair. Despite Mouse P.I.’s substantial 15-or-so-hour runtime, there’s rarely a moment developer Fumi Games’ sumptuous artistry, its lavish attention to detail – that gorgeously expressive animation, those meticulous backdrops, that spirited jazz soundtrack and voice stellar cast – doesn’t impress. As for the game all this in service to, it’s no slouch either. Even if it’s built on a foundation you might not be expecting.
Sure, Mouse P.I. is structured like an investigation as it catapults you across Mouseberg, bouncing from opera house to police station to seedy circus to high-class steamboat or haunted bayou in search of leads. But for all its deductive flourishes, like the crimeboard you’ll pin clues to between missions back at HQ, Mouse P.I. is essentially a ‘90s-style boomer shooter at its core. And, perhaps surprisingly given the limitless potential of its cartoon world, one spent in largely traditional company, building its trigger-happy combat around the likes of pistols, shotguns, and tommy guns. All of which go bang in distinct, decently satisfying ways.
But while Fumi does, occasionally, lean into more exotic weaponry (there’s a turpentine gun capable of melting enemies into smoldering piles of celluloid, for instance, but sadly no portable holes or retractable boxing gloves), it’s in combat’s intoxicatingly relentless sense of slapstick momentum that Mouse PI’s cartoon spirit is most keenly felt. Its main encounters usually unfold in arena-like spaces, enemies arriving in waves whenever the bell rings. Don’t expect anything like sophisticated tactical opposition, though; most enemies – from bat-wielding goons and gun-toting cultists to airborne rodents and tank-like heavies – are, with a few minor exceptions, brainless cannon fodder, programmed to hurtle straight at you, often in swarms and at considerable speed.
Combat, then, quickly becomes a game of fleet-footed evasion and crowd control, and Jack’s thankfully more than up to the task. He can boot enemies in the face for a moment’s respite (and boot barrels of toxic gloop at incoming hordes), while his multi-directional dash and spring-heeled double-jump are equally useful means of creating space when enemies threaten to overwhelm. Chuck in more exotic movement abilities later on, like Jack’s slow propeller glide and grappling hook, and it’s a decently powerful toolkit, letting you shoot, slide, and bound across each arena, snaffling up ammo and health restoratives without ever letting up momentum. It makes for wonderfully intense encounters, but the chaos doesn’t really allow for meaningful strategy, leaving a lightweight combat system that can feel a little one-note.
But at least it’s a good note. Fumi’s smart enough to keep Mouse P.I.’s battles brisk, ensuring you’re always left on an adrenaline high and ready for more, and there’re attempts at variety too. There’s a bit on a railway bridge where subway trains slice through the battleground as you duke it out, for instance, and, later, a literal game of ‘the floor is lava’ involving circus trampolines and flaming rings. You’ll battle mobsters onstage at the opera house, contending with the shifting playspace as scenery slides in and out. Its boss battles are a particular highlight, offering imaginative twists on the core combat rhythms. There’s a graveyard skirmish involving a ghost, a whole lot of skeletons, and your flashlight, for instance, and a fun bit of business down at the swamp as you deal with a furiously circling airboat and some teetering platforms.
But what really makes it all work is Fumi’s stellar sense of pacing. Mouse P.I.’s level design is consistently impressive; large, looping, lavishly detailed spaces that balance the chaos of intermittent combat with moments of gentle exploration, light platforming and puzzling, simple questing, and an engaging sense of progression that makes each mission feel like a mini-adventure of its own. Early on, for instance, your hunt for the missing magician takes you from theatre dressing rooms through rain-lashed streets and down into a busy subway, scampering along bustling platforms and staff-only side corridors before finally emerging elsewhere. Later, you’ll take a convoluted route through Mouseburg’s mouldering tenement buildings, bounding up fire escapes and through seedy apartment windows before infiltrating a sprawling police station in one of several possible ways. There are wilderness jaunts through gloomy mines and oozing wetlands; spooky villages and spookier mansions, plus plenty more.
And while missions themselves are largely linear, unfortunately to the point you can’t always go back to find collectibles you’ve missed, Fumi tucks just enough secrets in cleverly hidden corners that progress never feels overly restrictive. And there’s some smart structural sleight of hand elsewhere too. By slinging you back to Jack’s neighbourhood between missions, there’s a chance to decompress as you upgrade weapons, chat with Mouse P.I.’s delightful cast of reprobates at the cheese bar, even compete for prizes in a nifty baseball card mini-game. You’ll pick up side objectives to complete, and as fresh leads open up new avenues for investigation, you’ll often have multiple mission destinations to choose from, all of which helps maintain the illusion of investigatory freedom.
There are, admittedly, a few things I’m not too keen on. For a game about detective work, Mouse P.I. isn’t overly fond of letting you figure things out for yourself. The huge onscreen objective marker, showing you exactly where to go and what to look at next, is particularly egregious, and can’t be turned off. It’s a clumsy, rather patronising inclusion, limiting your sense of discovery. And it’s also entirely baffling given two, considerably more elegant in-game hint systems – a deployable fingerprint brush and an ever-present quest compass – already exist. I also don’t love the endless fourth-wall-breaking pop culture references. Fumi’s worldbuilding – its timely tale of encroaching fascism and those fighting against it – is wonderfully propulsive, rich in texture and storytelling potential. But its scattershot Twin Peaks references, its Mario references, Fallout references, Tomb Raider references, the fact there’s a weapon called the James Gun, breaks the spell of its craftsmanship a little, suggesting a worry that this intriguing world, its endearing characters, somehow wouldn’t be enough.
But really, these are minor blemishes. If we were focusing purely on its presentation, Mouse: P.I. for Hire is such a beautifully crafted experience – a full-blooded noir cartoon with proper intrigue and surprising heart – it’d be hard to completely dismiss it, even if it did fumble the stuff underneath. But it doesn’t. Fumi has more than risen to the occasion here, with a smart, surprising, and wonderfully atmospheric adventure that feels so much bigger than the enjoyably chaotic combat at its core. Here’s to those little touches that make all the difference, then. And the fact you can drop an anvil – or a piano – on a man’s head.
A copy of Mouse P.I. for Hire was provided for this review by PlaySide.
