We don’t do ratings for games on MobileSyrup, but if we did, Mouse: P.I. For Hire would be the epitome of a “7/10.”
It’s a decent game that’s carried heavily by its oh-so charming retro-inspired presentation, even when its central gameplay loop can feel overly familiar and repetitive.
As the title suggests, you play as a mouse private investigator named Jack Pepper (The Last of Us‘ Troy Baker) as he dives into a missing persons case that eventually blows up to include a wider conspiracy. It’s a fine enough mystery, elevated immensely by Baker’s excellent grizzled Brooklyn accent and a colourful cast of similarly well-acted characters, and it branches out into worthwhile subplots that explore police corruption, racism and the like within the city of Mouseburg.
And it helps that Mouseburg and all of its inhabitants are just so beautiful. Drawing inspiration from 1930s cartoons, P.I. For Hire sports sumptuous black-and-white rubber house visuals and a catchy jazz soundtrack that make everything pop. There’s even a liveliness to the animation, with everything from flowers and frogs to even your health gauge and parts of your gun swinging rhythmically.
With all of that said, the game doesn’t quite land with its noir homages. These kinds of genre stories tend to carry with them a rich atmosphere, stemming in no small part from the protagonist’s gritty hard-boiled detective work, but P.I. For Hire never actually lets players conduct any of it themselves. Instead, you follow a rigid structure wherein you go into a linear mission, return to Jack’s office in a small hub area and simply place clues on a board before the game automatically links together the necessary story revelations to queue up the next part of your investigation.
Given that the game leans so heavily into the P.I. angle, it feels like a huge missed opportunity to not explore even some light puzzle system to convey Jack’s deduction skills and further involve the player. (If nothing else, returning to this hub area does let you play a surprisingly robust baseball card minigame, and that encourages you to try to find and buy more cards throughout the campaign.)
The immersion afforded by the arrestingly gorgeous visuals also occasionally breaks due to just how quippy and referential the dialogue ends up being. I’m all for some tongue-in-cheek humour, but it’s not an exaggeration to say that practically every other line of dialogue is a cheese-related pun. (You might say that can get a little grating.) Similarly, P.I. For Hire throws in an almost overwhelming amount of nods to the likes of Steamboat Willie, Frankenstein and even conventions of game design. (Some of Jack’s many winking wisecracks include calling a more powerful goon a “mini-boss” before laughing or pointing out that his double-jump makes no sense.) It’s a shame because the writing can be a lot of fun when it leans into the genre tropes in a more general sense, like the femme fatale sauntering into Jack’s office or his deliberately hammy narration.
On the plus side, the core shooting mechanics are snappy. At its core, P.I. For Hire actually plays like a Doom-esque “boomer shooter,” meaning it emphasizes frenetic gunplay and constant movement over cover-based aiming down the sights. It’s pretty slick in practice, both in terms of its feel and the weapons you slowly unlock, like a freeze ray that turns enemies into blocks of ice that can then be shot or kicked into a million pieces or an acid sprayer which, in a wonderfully animated bit, melts the skin right off to reveal chattering skeletons. And throughout all of this, there’s a delightful juxtaposition in the endearingly innocent-looking animation and the bloody remains of your foes.
Like the clash between the pulpy presentation and inconsistent writing, though, there’s also a disconnect present in the gunplay. For one, Jack mowing down countless waves of enemies feels at odds with the whole P.I. and noir setup. But on a deeper level, the design surrounding the combat leaves much to be desired. In pretty much any firefight, there are doors marked with a skull to denote where the enemy will spawn, an immersion-breaking decision that also painfully telegraphs how skirmishes are going to go down. What’s more, there’s very little enemy variety, so you’re not exactly engaging with each fight all that differently, either.
But ultimately, I found myself coming back to Mouse: P.I. For Hire because it really does have ample charm. Outside of Canadian-made Cuphead, there’s hardly any games that have this lovingly handcrafted old-school art style, and fewer still that execute it so successfully. And while there’s an unevenness to some of the writing, structure and combat design, there’s enough gouda parts to brie enjoyable where it counts.
Mouse: P.I. For Hire is now available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC. PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch versions are also in the works, but don’t yet have a release date.
Image credit: PlaySide Studios
