Mouse P.I. For Hire is one hell of a cheese blend: a boomer-shooter at its core, masquerading as a 1930s black-and-white cartoon featuring a noir detective in a world of mice, rats and shrews. A lot is going on, but let’s go through it slice by slice, shall we? What you really need to know is that it’s a lot of fun and looks amazing.

Available On: Xbox Series S/X, PlayStation 5, PC, Switch 2
Reviewed On: PC
Developed By: Fumi Games
Published By: Playside Games

Review code provided by the publisher.

Troy Baker lends his voice to protagonist and private detective Jack Pepper and does a solid job as the cynical, world-weary noir detective who’s also starring in a Saturday morning cartoon. The writing does an equally good job of balancing those two opposing themes, creating a fun noir vibe that does justice to both the grungy detective stuff and the more goofy cartoon elements. It does an especially gouda job with the cheese puns. At first, the amount of cheese jokes being flung becomes tiring, but the writers persist by finding more and more cheese-based metaphors and turns-of-phrases and it becomes funny again.

The story drags you along a linear trail of conspiracy theories, mad scientists, corruption, and the sleazy movie industry. In other words, it hits everything a noir story really should, all set amidst the backdrop of a seedy city plagued with crime. Jack’s got a crime to solve, and he’s going to drop every cheesy quip he can while he’s getting the job done. Is the story going to have you on the edge of your seat? Nah. But it’s an entertaining yarn regardless.

It’s a shame that a game about a private detective skips the detecting part, though. Between missions, you venture back to Jack’s little office on the 2nd floor and pin all of the discovered clues on a board. But then there’s no careful linking of clues or piecing together the next step—where you’re going next is always immediately announced, and off you go. That seems like a missed opportunity for some fun.

Obviously, the main selling point is Mouse P.I. For Hire’s beautiful visual style. Front and centre is the hosepipe animation style of the early 1900s, from the heavily exaggerated breathing animations to the way limbs bend and move like they are made of…well, hosepipes. While the world is fully 3D, enemies are presented as incredibly detailed sprites that rotate as you move, a lovely piece of old-school design that I also assume was required to make the animation work. There’s a lot of amazing detail, too—the standing skeleton after melting an enemy, the blinking eyeballs on top of an ash heap; these help make the game tick.

It’s coupled with a black and white noir vibe to match the narrative. Part of me would love to see this whole thing brought to life via vibrant colours as well, but the black and white combined with the animation gives it an excellent early 1900s cartoon aesthetic.

The developers began as an animation house, so the gorgeous visuals make sense. This is a team that knows how to make things look good, and Mouse P.I. For Hire truly is breathtaking at times. But that does raise an important question: can a developer that has only just jumped into the game development side of things craft something that’s not just good to look at, but fun to play?

That presentation is doing a lot of the work, melted atop the gameplay like a delicious fondue. Scrape it off and what you’ve got is a competent, fun, but surprisingly unsurprising shooter. You run, you gun, you occasionally dash while riddling enemies with bullets and blowing up convenient barrels of death.

I wish the arsenal at your disposal was as inventive as the art style, though. Instead, we have the usual pistol, shotgun, super shotgun and a machine gun, with only a few other weapons offering up anything new or different. A gun that fires acid globs was probably the highlight, and the second most useful weapon behind the tommy gun. Unfortunately, the other unique weapons are too situational to be used much in regular combat, although the game is easy enough that you could whip them out if you don’t mind fights taking a little longer.

The weapons feel good to fire, and there’s an upgrade system in place where you spend schematics found scattered around the levels. This can add cool alt-fires, and I like that the weapons visually change, too. Yes, I’m a sucker for that kind of thing.

The gunplay has a nice, fast pace to it, and the game gradually opens up its areas so that you have more room to strafe and use a few extra abilities, like the grappling hook and tail-hover. There’s some environmental kills to consider too, including being able to drop a hanging piano on enemies occasionally, and convenient death-barrels scattered around the place like the HR department went on holiday and left the local drunk in charge.

But the enemies are a little lacking, having apparently eaten so much Swiss cheese that their brains are now full of holes. They boil down to blokes who charge at you, and blokes who stand back and shoot at you. That’s it. They don’t move around, try to smartly use the environment, or anything else.

Basically, it’s competent run-and-gun action that’s missing a little enemy variety and brains, or anything to set it apart, but is otherwise enjoyable. Less of a finely aged mature cheddar, and more a basic bitch block you bought from Tesco. Is it the best? Hell no! But it still makes some bangin’ cheese on toast.

There’s also a bit more talking than you’d normally expect from this style of shooter. I don’t say this as either a criticism or a positive—merely an observation, and a warning to those who just want to shoot stuff. Between levels, you venture back to your little hub world and chat with some characters, and even out on missions there’s normally a couple of NPCs to banter with.

With such a striking visual style, I went into the game thinking it would be a pretty short experience—maybe 5 or 6 hours of gameplay. To my surprise, it was closer to 15 hours to wrap up almost all of the content on offer. Admittedly, though, toward the end it was starting to struggle to hold my attention. The shooting had lost its lustre, but thankfully the vibes had me sticking around until the end.

Judged purely on the gameplay, Mouse P.I. For Hire wouldn’t be anything special, a run-of-the-mill boomer-shooter. But that stunning 1930s cartoon aesthetic and the cheesy noir writing take that okay gameplay and turns it into a memorable experience.