Mouse: PI For Hire Review: A competent shooter oozing with anime charm

Like any foolishly optimistic gamer, I sat in the darkness of my house, playing a game that I hoped would shine enough to live up to its promise. A black and white shooter in a city full of rats? Classic cartoon style of animation? Gumshoe Noir plot? The peculiarities are stacked like Jenga blocks, and one faulty element can cause the entire tower to collapse. But that’s not always the case in Gamer Town, where promising pitches are a dime a dozen, and few succeed in realizing their bold dreams.

Mouse: PI For Hire, the long-awaited indie first-person shooter Originated from a post on Xwill finally be released on Thursday after years of trailers and teasers, and for a modest price of $30 to boot. Although its creators from Polish studio Fumi Games insist that the game’s look is more broadly inspired by the 1930s “rubber hose” cartoon style popularized by cartoons Betty Boop and Fleischer, it’s not hard to see visual similarities to Steamboat Willie, the black-and-white character who preceded Mickey Mouse. Much of Mouse: PI For Hire The appeal of the game is the old-fashioned, cartoonish style contrasted with its violent gunplay – and after playing half a dozen of the game, that accounts for much of its charm.

But it’s a pleasure to discover all the visual styles covering a fairly complex story filled with classic noir elements. Players take control of Jack Pepper, a war hero turned hardened detective whose pursuit of a missing persons case takes him from the bright lights of Mouseburg high society to its seedy back alleys and dangerous criminal underbelly, uncovering a vast conspiracy in the process.

Mouse: PI For Hire is packed with staples like a protagonist, a femme fatale love interest, political corruption, social inequality, dirty cops, and a billboard as our detective fills the case with evidence. Despite the cartoons and rubber hose violence, noir is played straight. This is clearly a love letter to the detective fiction genre made popular by American fantasy writers.

In conversation with Fumi Games Lead Producer Maciej Krzemień Last June at Summer Game FestThe team working on the game was inspired by the stories of famous noir writer Raymond Chandler, and the protagonists did a lot of historical research to get this period right.

“We’re obviously not American ourselves. We wanted to be very aware of this whole style of noir detective story, but with some fun elements in it,” Krzyme told me.

Much of the success of Pepper’s character is due to his voice actor, Troy Baker, who delivers lines and performances in gravel tones befitting a hard-boiled detective narrating the case throughout the game. The rest of the voice cast is suitably bland—Florian Clair as journalist Wanda Fuller, and Frank Todaro as politician and Pepper’s war buddy Cornelius Stilton, among others—delivering a range of period-appropriate performances that range from faux-mid-Atlantic sophistication to a street accent that’s as descending as any New Jersey equivalent near Mouseburg.

The dialogue is suitably noir, and the writing in the game is a mix of 1930s-era black humor and groan-worthy puns (which is a good thing, I swear). Rats end their day with a long swig of stinky cheese to take the edge off, the smugglers are “cheese sellers,” a pistol modeled after a German Mauser is called a “Micer,” and so on.

Although the game’s soundtrack is an appropriate mix of big band tunes and jazzy tunes, Mouse: PI For Hire’s commitment to evoking the 1930s extends even further. Optional filters layer in film grain and gauze blur on visuals, as well as reduce the sound quality of the music to sound like it’s coming from a vinyl or wax record. The retro look and sound are a fun addition to the immersion.

But Mouse: PI For Hire is a shooter first and foremost, and while its combat has more pros than cons, there are enough challenges in adapting its gorgeous animation style to 3D shooting to make it feel like a mixed bag.

Mouse: PI For Hire is more of a fun and immersive jaunt than a great shooter

Mouse: PI For Hire feels like a modern take on the initial wave of first-person shooters, like Doom and Duke Nukem: Enemies enter the room the player is in, shooting from a distance or approaching melee. Like some of the so-called “Boomershooters” released in recent years that evoke an old-school shooter atmosphere with updated controls, enemies don’t have a lot of dynamic movement, forcing players to shoot back and switch to the appropriate weapon of the moment.

Players get an expanded arsenal of BioShock-like weapons, relying on a pistol, shotgun, and Thompson submachine gun to work alongside a flashy new Devarnisher pistol that fires balls of turpentine (the chemical old-school animators used to remove ink) to melt enemies. There are more in the later parts of the game, and upgrades to boot, making weapons more useful throughout the game.

Mouse: PI For Hire doesn’t try to be a high-end shooter, so it’s mostly fine for getting into gunfights with stationary enemies. The problem lies in the combination of the game’s visual style and shooting action: enemies look like they’re straight out of an anime, but their gorgeously animated 2D bodies can be difficult to hit in 3D space. Often times, when I’m running around, I’ll have a hard time hitting smaller enemies, and their hitbox can get a little confusing, causing me to miss some shots I thought I should have hit.

This isn’t too big of an issue on easy and standard difficulties, which are pretty forgiving, but when I cranked it up to hard mode (which you can do quickly), the punishing damage made my uncertain aiming more of an issue. I stumbled here and there while trying to keep my bullets landing on enemies, especially the ones that were far away.

Although it’s a bit confusing, in the end it’s a minor drawback to a well-crafted experience. Mouse: PI For Hire is an old-fashioned fun ride, and as long as I treat rooms full of enemies and bosses as flavor in the story, I’m far from disappointed. Not every shooter needs to be the next Portal or Titanfall 2 that reinvents the genre, especially $30 games that will likely keep players going for more than a dozen hours before they even get to the credits.

What the game gets right is its dual commitments to the anime style and its complex world. I’ll never get tired of watching rubber hose style anime that involve reloading weapons or blowing off enemies’ heads with a shotgun blast at close range in a comedic flurry of violence. It’s a delightful counterpart to Mouseburg, a gritty but believable town with all the characters, locales, power struggles and plot twists you’d find in any other film noir.

Early in the game, you followed a lead into an opera house where you foiled an assassination attempt on a politician – though it was done using a cannon on the stage that started burning the place down, and you had to fight a burly singing mini-boss dressed as Brunhilda to get out. The combination of basic elements with cartoon logic makes Mouse: PI For Hire truly unique, and Steamboat Willie’s appearance belies that the game is deeper than it initially appears in its dedication to telling a detective story, with all the mysterious twists and turns of the genre.

“Without spoiling anything, there’s a bigger conspiracy behind it all, and it’s all very serious in terms of the social themes, and the social themes of the game, and it actually reflects the political climate of the world in the 1930s — not just in America,” Krzemień told me last June.

So, yes, it’s a game where a non-Mickey Mouse gets a gun, but it’s all in the service of unraveling the mystery, fighting the growing fascist threat, and hopefully getting enough cheese to pay off his debts.

Mouse: PI For Hire releases on April 16 for PC, Xbox One X/S, PS5, and Nintendo Switch 2.