Mouse: P.I. for Hire

Publisher: PlaySide Studios

Developer: Fumi Games

Platforms: Playstation 5 (Reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, Microsoft Windows

Price: $29.99

There's something to be said for art that simply intends to faithfully imitate (and I said "art," so AI doesn't count, even though it does imitate). It's a show of passion in and of itself to pay homage to something so well that one might not be able to tell the difference. That's the major draw of Mouse: P.I. for Hire (henceforth referred to as Mouse). 

For those who either live under a rock or don't make a habit out of mocking IGN, Mouse is a boomer shooter with a Steamboat Willy "rubber hose" animation style. Ever since its announcement, the internet has been on the edge of its collective seat with an abundance of admiration for that animation, but a question has consistently loomed high above this little (mostly) indie game.

Would it end up a beloved classic in the same vein as Cuphead (and with equal IGN disdain, as it turns out)?

Or would the lovingly-rendered cartoon style ultimately end up as a crutch?

I'll put it to you this way, dear reader. Within the first few levels, I was enjoying Mouse. But I had this distinct feeling that it was going to get old before the end. 

A purely black-and-white color palette with enemies that didn't look distinct in anything but height and musculature?

A more classic boomer shooter format where the only changes to the gameplay loop seemed to be the addition of new weapons?

I would've put money down that it would get old.

But it didn't.

Mouse has some noteworthy flaws, make no mistake. But it's still a far better game than I would've thought at the outset. What's more, it boasts a story and character roster that are both infinitely more charming than they have any right to be. 

The year is 1934 in the city of Mouseburg (yes, really). You are Jack Pepper, a private investigator and war veteran who is approached one day with an intriguing case: the sudden disappearance of a famous magician he befriended during the war. As all good noir cases do, this sees Jack bumping shoulders with a classic femme fatale, a trafficking ring headed by crooked members of Mouseburg's finest, and a rising fascistic party with the politically noncommittal stance of wanting the city to be run by "big mice" while oppressing "small mice." This is a cartoon first and a noir story second, so you can expect to see plenty of old-timey humor thrown in with the more serious undertones.

For an example of that humor:

"Word is you're headed to the docks!"

"Nah, it's just a cold."

"No, not the DOC'S!"

At times the humor lands pretty well, at times it elicits a groan, but it's almost always charming. More importantly, Jack's many end-of-combat one-liners never quite venture into quip territory. 

If it wasn't already obvious from Jack's supremely on-the-nose name, you can also expect more cheese puns than you'll know what to do with...and while I'm not going to take any points off for it (for fear of being received like the IGN reviewer), I do have to say that the sheer deluge of cheese puns does absolutely wear out its welcome by the end. 

A lot of the time, it isn't even actually puns, come to think of it. Just replacing normal words with cheese. Alcohol is fondue. The femme fatale's voice is like gorgonzola on a mozzarella platter or something like that. In a script with some scattered high-quality humor, it's hard to deny that this particular aspect of the writing is pretty weak. 

But returning to the good parts of the writing, this is also a game filled to the brim with references to both modern games and old cartoons. For the latter, you need look no further than the power up that sees Jack eat a can of spinach for an increased boost to punch damage. For the former, there's a window where you talk to a sickly, coughing, unseen mouse who laments about how nothing good comes from "the hunt" (for cheese) or whatnot. And in spite of the fact that there are game references, you may be stunned to learn that I never heard anything about the cheesecake being a lie, an arrow in anyone's brie, or whether or not a mouse is entitled to the fetta of his brow. So it's never low-hanging fruit!

Surprisingly (at least to me), the characters are also a strong point of this game's writing. Jack himself might just be your standard noir detective with a side of cheese thrown in, but he's a well-done noir detective with a side of cheese thrown in. Surrounding Jack are a reporter, a shrew-d barman, a good-natured but ineffectual mayoral candidate, and an eccentric engineer kid whose stepdad Jack locked up many years ago. All of these folks are lovable in their own ways. And while they aren't going to dethrone any of the Bioware classics in terms of their development, they still make for a surprisingly good cast.

Another positive surprise with Mouse is that its gameplay loop stays solid throughout.

Let me take a step back: Mouse is a boomer shooter in the same vein as Doom. It's a movement-based FPS with a gigantic weapon wheel and an enemy roster that largely behaves like a realtime chess board. 

This game is really as simple as that. You go to a mission location, shoot other cartoon mice, and maybe pick up a new weapon along the way. But the shooting itself is (mostly) satisfying enough to carry the loop on its own, and this is enhanced with exceptionally varied level design. 

Jack's investigation takes him to a movie studio, a bog, a mansion, a hoity-toity party aboard a steam boat named "Willie," and some other locations that I triple-dog-dare you to try and guess! Arenas in these locations also vary quite a bit, with some featuring grappling hook-centric architecture and others featuring little combat puzzles to solve while surviving the hordes of enemies you face. This was by far the most surprising aspect of the gameplay quality to me. I'd expected to see straightforward arenas or recycled assets...but even when the game does take you back to previous locations, there are key differences that make these return trips their own experiences!

Equally varied and impressive is Mouse's roster of bosses...mostly. The first boss and one that takes place in a trippier level fall flat, but generally speaking, no two bosses are alike. 

For example, one boss hides in a building that you have to destroy piece by piece by traversing a battlefield full of respawning enemies to find ammo for a new weapon. 

Another boss is kind of a cat and mouse affair (pun seriously not intended, I swear to god) where you can only deal damage by using your contextual flashlight.

One final example is a boss that you defeat in a way that organically causes the battlefield to become more treacherous.

It's a running theme at this point: the bosses are, say it with me, surprisingly good. Tons of variety, plenty of fun to be had, and I could never guess what was coming up next.

Gameplay isn't perfect, however. A boomer shooter can sometimes live or die on its weapons...and I found most of the weapons thoroughly underwhelming. They're as varied as everything else in this game, which I have to commend...but in practice, only one or two of them are worth using, and they aren't the unique ones. 

Is it cool to have a gun that fires sonar beams that eventually cause enemy heads to explode? Obviously! But it doesn't feel like it has any power to it.

Is it cool to have a double-barrel shotgun that sets enemies on fire? Obviously! But neither it nor the standard shotgun have any feeling of power behind them either.

Is it cool to have a sword ripped directly from Doom Eternal? Obviously! But say it with me folks: it doesn't feel like it has any power.

You'll likely have noticed a pattern. Really, this game's version of a Tommy Gun (here called a "James Gun" because references) and the acid sprayer are the only ones that have any "oompf" to them. 

But by far the most underwhelming weapon of the bunch is the "super weapon" that you unlock through a challenge. It barely has any ammo, doesn't even kill mid-level enemies in one hit or deal any kind of thorough AOE damage, and getting it sucks up the profits from most of your in-level exploits.

On that note, there's one last gameplay facet to discuss. The challenge through which you earn that "super weapon." Baseball card matches.

Hidden throughout levels and available for purchase in the main hub area, you'll find baseball cards for use in probably the most fun half-baked minigame in recent memory! 

A given game of baseball cards features two innings made up of 5 "rounds" each. In the first inning, you play as the batter, and in the second, you play as the pitcher. The lady who serves as your opponent (it's just her, no other players) plays the opposite side of the field from whatever you currently are. 

At the start of each inning, you draw a handful of cards. Cards come in two varieties: players and power-ups. There are different decks for batter and pitcher, but the makeup is entirely the same. 

Player cards come with an inherent "power" value ranging from 3ish to 9, with that power reflecting their skill in batting or pitching. A batter "hits" the ball if their power exceeds that of the pitcher. If it's a tie, then whether it's a hit or a miss is decided via a coin flip. If the batter overpowers the pitcher by around 3 or more, it results in an immediate home run for both themselves and any other batters currently on the bases.

If the power difference isn't quite that high, then each individual batter also comes with a "speed" value between 1 and 3 that denotes how many bases they can run per round. So batters with a speed of 3 are obviously going to make it back to home plate by the time the next round ends, but it's not entirely a foregone conclusion.

This is because some pitchers (but not all) come with a "fielding" value, which allows them to decrease the speed of batters who get started running bases in the current round only. So even the fastest batters can end up hamstrung if you or your opponent plays a pitcher with a high fielding value. 

When you send out a player in the beginning of a round, you also have the option to play a power-up from your hand. These boil down to extra power or extra speed/fielding, but you can only play one per round. And it's here where some strategy starts to come into play.

Imagine, for instance, that you're a batter with a hand that only has four players with powers of 4/speeds of 3, and your one power-up is a +2 power enhancement. If it's the start of the inning, you might want to save that power-up and play a lesser card in the hopes of drawing a higher-power player when you draw in the next round. But what if you've only got two rounds to go and you need some points? In that case, the power-up would bring one of those players up to 6 with that 3 speed still intact. You're far more likely to outperform the pitcher with that kind of power, and if the gamble pays off, you're almost certainly going to get that batter back to home base before the inning is up. 

Or imagine a scenario where you have a batter card whose power is 7 but whose speed is only 1. For power-ups, you have both a +2 power card and a +2 speed card. If it's the start of the inning, maybe you'd want to bet that the pitcher starts off with something weaker, and therefore use the speed card to get that batter further if you're right. Or if it's the end of the inning, you might decide to simply enhance this batter's power in the hopes of cinching an easy home run off their already high base stat. 

The same strategizing can be applied to the pitcher role too, though it's often simpler. Sometimes you're not going to be able to prevent a batter from getting on a base. And when that happens, it all comes down to how much leniency you can afford to give your foe. If you're close to being tied or lapped in points, your strategy should immediately switch from overpowering the competition to simply trying to stall every batter on base for as long as possible. This can mean risking enemy home-runs by playing low-power pitchers with high fielding potential. If you're lucky, you can pull out a strong pitcher and a fielding power-up for a bit of a double-whammy, but pitching is a much more gamble-heavy position.

...how on EARTH did this end up being the longest segment in this entire review? 

Anyway, I think it's probably obvious that I enjoyed this quite a bit...but it's really quite lazy, to be honest.

For one thing, there are only two innings...baseball has a lot more than that, and if there's a tie, there are overtime innings to handle it. But in this minigame, it's just the two innings and no overtime to handle ties. You only get one of the twenty tokens you need to unlock that aforementioned weapon when you win, not when you tie. 

If you can't already see why this is a bad design choice, let me enlighten you. Say you have a really bad first inning and get no points. There's no point in continuing. At best, you'll end up in a draw. At worst, you'll outright lose. Either way, you're out $50 and don't get a token. With no way whatsoever to make up for a bad first go, you've basically got no choice but to rage quit unless you just really want the pitching practice. 

Also, while the strategy is fun, I mentioned almost every major play you can do in the examples I gave. There isn't a whole lot of variety in card stats despite quite a few different named players being available, so there really isn't that much more you can do than what I've already described. 

So, I enjoyed the little baseball minigame enough to win 20 times and get a crap weapon out of it, but I'd be negligent in my duty if I didn't point out that it's more-or-less an afterthought. 

Another thing that seems to have largely been an afterthought is QA. With so much attention being given to Mouse's art style, it's beyond frustrating that Fumi Games didn't put in the legwork to make sure that art style wasn't tarnished.

The biggest problem with Mouse is the massive degree of jittering that happens on PS5. I haven't seen anyone else complain about this, which is weird, because my sessions suffered from serious jittering seemingly every time I walked up a set of stairs or turned too fast. It wasn't the framerate, as Jack's hands continued to move at a silky smooth 60fps while the rest of the screen jittered. 

You know when else things moved at a silky smooth 60fps?

When playing on "Quality" mode. The jittering had gotten so bad and it caused me such a headache that I decided it would be worthwhile to switch away from Performance mode since those settings clearly weren't doing anything. 

But when I made that switch, I found that literally nothing had changed. The visual fidelity was still the same, the framerate was still the same, and the jittering wasn't even a smidgen better. Literally nothing had changed. 

And still, not a single complaint online from what I've seen. These problems (down to the lack of difference between graphical presets) continued when I'd close the game, when I'd shut down the PS5 and reboot, and when I'd start up again the next day. 

I guess the one thing I never tried was uninstalling and re-installing...but like, come on! 

The fact that I haven't seen any other complaints for PS5 tells me that either nobody is playing this thing on consoles or I'm just insanely unlucky. If I'm just insanely unlucky, feel free to ignore the points I'm going to take off for this. Either way, I can only report on my own experiences.

One thing I have seen some complaints about regardless of platform, however, is a progression bug that happens in one of the penultimate missions. If you're too clever with your traversal of the level and end up missing a particular enemy encounter, the exit for the level won't spawn. Furthermore, the enemies you need to kill to fix that don't spawn either. So if you get this bug like I did, you have no choice but to start basically this whole section of the level again. 

On the subject of bugs that aren't really justifiable, I also experienced a hard crash after dying during the final boss fight. What's worse, when I loaded back into that fight after rebooting, the entire screen was pure white for a couple seconds, all the while I was taking damage. When I died again, there wasn't another crash, but that pure white screen bug remained. 

There are also some smaller bugs like entire lines of spoken dialogue missing from the subtitles. Not the end of the world, but it still speaks to the lack of care this team showed the QA process.

As if everything I've already said wasn't enough, there's also a problem with the visual design (not a bug, per-se) that I'd forgotten until I was getting ready to pivot to some technical positives...namely...the visual design. 

Hoooo mama. 

When you find secret areas, you'll often come across a comic panel, a newspaper, or a baseball card as a reward alongside some ammo or money. Problem is, not every secret area contains collectibles. So you might just think an area is one of those if you don't find a collectible...but it's entirely possible you'll be mistaken. I'm not even confident in my own declaration that not every area contains one, because the visual design does a fantastic job of hiding these collectibles even when they're right in front of your face. I don't know if its the lighting, the specific shades of black and white, or what...but whatever the case may be, the rewards you gain for exploring can often go unnoticed because of this. 

NOW let's get to positives. In spite of that last complaint, the animation and the sprites are impressive, as is the look of the 3D world in which this takes place. The soundtrack, while sparse and repetitive, does largely capture that 1930's sound...except for one clearly modern pop-y track with a jazzy coat of paint that plays in the world sometimes....goddamn it, Mouse: P.I. for Hire! You can't just let me praise you for a technical thing, can you?

I realize that this review has ended on a tremendously negative note. But folks, I have to say that I don't hold nearly as much of a grudge against Mouse as I should. The art style, the gameplay loop, the surprisingly good story and characters, the unpredictable and always stunning level design, there's so much going for this little passion project that I can't help but find myself feeling a little nostalgic for it now that all is said and done. Fumi Games absolutely must be held to account for the myriad of technical flaws this game carries, as must all developers no matter how small...but there is a sort of state of grace for quality in other areas. A "time off for good behavior" system, if you will. 

So in spite of everything, I'm still recommending Mouse: P.I. for Hire. Your technical results may vary, some of the weapons aren't great, and the writing is insufferably ~cheesy~ at times, but there's an undeniable x-factor to this game that I think will carry it for you.

Let us review:

Some weak weapons - 0.5

Technical woes - 2.0 (more than 1 point removed for scale)

The final score for Mouse: P.I. for Hire is...

7.5/10 - Pretty Good