The first time I saw Mouse: PI For Hire in action was in a 2023 trailer, back when the game was just named “Mouse.” The classic black-and-white rubberhose animation and art style, inspired by old cartoons from the 1930s, instantly caught my attention. It looked awesome. But three years later, when I finally booted up the game to play on my PC, I was worried that Mouse: PI For Hire might have little more going on than just a fun visual gimmick.
About 12 hours later, and after shooting a lot of mice, I’m happy to report that this game ain’t just a pretty face. No, it’s much more. Mouse: PI For Hire is one of the best first-person shooters I’ve played in many years.
A classic story of Nazi mice, a missing magician, and robots
Mouse: PI For Hire, available on consoles and PC starting on April 16, stars anthropomorphic mouse Jack Pepper, a war vet and former cop turned private detective, who lives and operates in a city filled with many other talking and walking mice and shrews. When one of Jack’s old war buddies, now living life as a famous magician, goes missing, he’s pulled into a case that quickly grows into something much wilder and more deadly for those involved.
This is a case that’s connected to big-time mice, missing shrews, an evil political party directly inspired by the Nazis, creepy monsters, robots, and much more.
At times, Mouse: PI For Hire’s writing can feel very heavy-handed; there’s literally a Nazi-like party of mice that seems involved in trying to round up shrews (*looks at the camera*) who are already treated like second-class citizens by many. But, for the most part, Mouse’s noir tale kept me hooked as I wanted to find all the clues spread across levels, stick them on Jack’s corkboard, and connect all the dots to solve the biggest case of his career.
To put all those pieces together and solve the case, you’ll need to explore a dozen or so hand-crafted levels and do a lot of shooting. Thankfully, the combat and level design in Mouse: PI For Hire are top-notch.
A wonderfully animated world
The big draw that will likely be what gets a lot of people to check out Mouse: PI For Hire in the first place is for sure going to be its distinct visual style inspired by classic cartoons. It looks cool, but I was concerned that this art style would lead to levels that all feel and look the same. Instead, Mouse’s devs and designers use its classic cartoon aesthetics to offer up a variety of experiences as tasty and diverse as a fancy cheese board.
Sure, there are the settings you’d expect from a black-and-white noir-themed shooter, even one starring mice. These include back alleys, crime scenes, shady establishments, and seaside docks.
But Mouse also features creepy swamps, strange labs, movie sets, and more that I don’t want to spoil in this review. Every one of these levels takes inspiration from classic cartoons and movies from the ‘30s and ‘40s to offer up a greatest hits–like spread of animation tropes and ideas.
Going through these levels was a joy, not just because they look properly authentic, but also because the devs have built levels that never feel too linear or sprawling. There’s always a path forward, but also a few places to poke your mousey nose into before you move on. And if you do poke around, you’ll find all the tiny details buried in each level. Plants with faces, spiders with shoes, dancing slugs, you know, the usual stuff.
As I played Mouse: PI For Hire, I felt like I had walked into a dozen classic cartoons from Disney and WB, and wanted to explore each nook and cranny endlessly. Well, until the gunfire started back up.
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BACK-OF-THE-BOX QUOTE
“Yeah, yeah, there’s a Steamboat Willie reference in here, okay? You happy?”
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Developer
Fumi Games
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TYPE OF GAME
Level-based first-person-shooter featuring classic cartoon visuals and RPG-like weapon upgrades
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LIKED
Gorgeous art and animation, gripping mystery, fantastic level design, the Tommy Gun, gunplay is satisfying
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DISLIKED
Some late game difficulty spikes, a few guns are lackluster
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PLATFORMS
PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, PC (Played)
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PLAYED
Played through the main campaign. Took 13 hours. Collected all clues. Completed most side jobs.
Always Be Shooting
While Mouse: PI For Hire features a hub area you return to after missions to talk to characters, a fully developed baseball card game with collectible cards you can find and buy, and even a simple but extremely charming animated overworld you drive around to reach new levels, let’s get something straight: This is a first-person shooter.
By the end, I’d probably killed over 1,000 mice, shrews, robots, alligators, and dogs. Gunplay and combat make up 80 percent of your time in Mouse: PI For Hire. That might disappoint some, but for those of you (like me) who love well-crafted shooters, Mouse is a damn fine example of the genre.
There’s an ample amount of enemies to fight and a wonderful variety in where and how you deal with these bastards. Sometimes it’s straight-forward shootouts through cartoonish hallways. Other times, you might be asked to kick mice into specific areas to trigger something, or you’ll need to use a power-up to take out a whole load of them in a big arena fight.
Enemies hit hard, though, with some able to take out massive chunks of your health in a few shots, so you’ll need to be careful and move around a lot using the dash, double jump, and grapple abilities. Jack can carry up to nine pieces of cheddar on him that can be used to heal during battles, so you can usually escape death if you play smart, keep moving, and eat some cheese when needed.
Guns in Mouse may look like they were ripped out of a classic cartoon, complete with stretchy animations, but they hit hard and sound dangerous. The Tommy Gun in Mouse, known in-game as the James Gun, is one of my favorite video game guns of the year. It sounds powerful, rips enemies up, and gets even better as you upgrade it with hidden blueprints you find in levels. The shotgun, starting pistol, and acid launcher are also a hoot to shoot.
Some guns unlocked later in the campaign aren’t nearly as effective or fun to use, but I mostly ignored them and had no trouble in firefights. And with some upgrades, even a few of these stinkers became useful in a pinch or specific moments. Still, these later guns, coupled with a few late combat encounters that spike in difficulty, slightly sour Mouse’s otherwise perfect plate of cheese.
A few late-game difficulty spikes, some heavy-handed story elements, and a few lackluster weapons hold back Mouse: PI For Hire a bit, but it’s still an incredibly creative, inventive, unique, and action-packed FPS that mixes classic cartoon animation, noir cliches, and satisfying gunplay into something that is unlike any shooter I’ve played before.
