Mouse: P.I. For Hire PC review — Black and white are all I see

I’d been patiently waiting for Mouse: P.I. For Hire for years at this point. A black-and-white first-person shooter with a 30s cartoon aesthetic? Who in their right mind wouldn’t want that? The game is certainly more linear than I wanted, and it being in black-and-white creates some unique challenges that make me wish there were splashes of colour here and there, but the surprisingly good story, excellent voice acting, convincing world, and variable level design all provide an entertaining noir adventure that absolutely succeeds at what it sets out to accomplish.

Mouse: P.I. For Hire sees mouse private investigator Jack Pepper following up on a few cases involving missing people and murders as he struggles to connect the dots. It all starts with a missing magician, before the plot thickens when groups of shrews start getting vanished en masse. The game’s characters are all rodentia, with most of them being mice with designs reminiscent of Golden Age Mickey Mouse. The animation is uniformly excellent and the game does a fantastic job of capturing the look of the era its inspired by. It really does look and feel like an old cartoon.

The voice acting is extremely impressive, with fully-voiced dialogue sequences and tons of really terrific performances from the whole cast. Troy Baker, who plays Jack, does an especially good job of bringing the character to life, with some moments here and there where he goes above and beyond in regard to his performance. All of the voices are filtered to have lower audio quality too, which corresponds to the default use of film grain and filtering to make the visuals more akin to old film. The dedication to the presentation is admirable.

Mouse: P.I. For Hire appears to be a bit of a throwback first-person shooter at first blush, but it really isn’t. The game’s structure tends to have you go to Jack’s office, talk to people nearby, and put clues up on a board. Doing all of this will open up locations on the map that you’ll drive to via an overhead perspective. Most of the locations you can enter are basically all just linear levels. You enter them, follow the quest marker, and fight your way through until you get to the end and return to the office. The levels themselves are designed well enough, but don’t expect to be hunting for keys to open doors like in Doom.

Due to this, the game is a very story-driven adventure. That’s not to say there’s no exploration, though. Levels have plenty of secrets to find, including blueprints that you’ll need to upgrade your guns. You’ll find these on occasion, plus you’ll also get new guns as you go through the levels. This starts with your standard pistol and shotgun, but you soon get a gun that fires varnish in a reference to Who Framed Roger Rabbit (it melts the ink right off an enemy’s bones), a cannon, a double barrelled shotgun that burns enemies to death, and more. There’s a solid variety to the guns, but the varnish gun absolutely dominates for a while, as it’s great from range and one-shots basically all normal enemies.

Jack may be a private investigator, but this is an FPS, so you’ll constantly have enemies gunning for you. Landing shots on foes will see ink fly off of them (or maybe it’s blood, either way) and headshots will decapitate them. There’s a good variety of enemies here, from melee foes, ones with various guns, flying enemies, tiny enemies with bombs, tankier opposition, and much more. There are regular boss battles too. The levels themselves mostly feel unique and feature such locations as a movie studio, a mansion filled with robots, and a cemetery.

There needed to be a lot of variety too, because the game being in black and white could have made things run together. There is a certain level of visual monotony due to this, but Mouse: P.I. For Hire does a pretty great job of keeping gameplay interesting. The story being as good as it is definitely makes pushing forward feel breezy too. The shooting itself is good enough, but not great. Not all weapons feel weighty enough or satisfying to shoot (the starting pistol, for instance, feels weightless and incredibly weak), but there’s a certain level of enjoyment to be had using, say, the varnish gun or tommy gun.

You do occasionally get some new movement abilities in addition to weapons, such the ability to use Jack’s tail as a grappling hook or as a hovering apparatus. Jack has a stamina meter too, which gets depleted upon using his dash, his kick (which stuns foes), among others. Due to all of this, the game does throw in some new types of challenges to keep combat interesting, plus it’s good about ramping up the enemies. The game isn’t big about throwing ridiculous gauntlets at you, but there are definitely moments where I was surprised by just how many foes were gunning for me at once.

Overall, Mouse: P.I. For Hire is more about the whole package, as it’s not a game most will be playing for the gameplay alone. It’s a decent shooter and the levels are fun enough, but the real hooks are the story and aesthetic, as the game wouldn’t be all that noteworthy without it. What an aesthetic it is, though. If you find the idea of a 1930’s cartoon-styled noir appealing, you’ll probably very much enjoy the game, and if not, the gameplay probably won’t wow you. Still, there’s a good amount of content on display, there are tons of weapons to use and upgrade, and the story is interesting enough to carry you forward.

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