TL;DR: Mouse: P.I. for Hire is a visually stunning boomer shooter with fun movement and solid gunplay that tries really hard to marry classic noir with cartoon absurdity. The endless cheese puns and self-referential humor quickly wear thin, the detective elements feel tacked-on, and the ludonarrative dissonance is strong enough to break immersion. Perfectly fine mindless mouse-blasting if that’s all you want, but anyone hoping for a thoughtful genre mash-up will feel the missed opportunities.

I still remember the first time a grainy VHS copy of The Maltese Falcon flickered across my old CRT in the dead of night. That smoky voiceover, the fedora tilted just so, the way every shadow felt like it was hiding something heavier than regret. Noir has always been my quiet obsession, the kind that makes you want to pour a cheap whiskey and mutter cynical one-liners at the rain-streaked window.

So when Mouse: P.I. for Hire popped up on my Steam library, promising a hardboiled detective tale starring a mouse in a world of mice, I practically tripped over my own tail to hit play. Here was a game that looked like it had raided the Warner Bros. vault from 1935 and then decided to strap on a rocket launcher. How could I not fall for it?

Turns out, falling is easy. Sticking the landing? That’s where things get messy.

The story kicks off with Jack Pepper, our down-on-his-luck rodent gumshoe, getting pulled into a missing magician case by a sharp-tongued reporter from the Mouseburg Herald. What starts as a simple tail job quickly balloons into conspiracy, political assassination attempts, and some pretty ugly mouse-on-shrew oppression that hits harder than you’d expect from a cartoon world. The twists are there. The atmosphere drips with fedora energy. And for the first couple of hours I was genuinely invested, scribbling mental notes on my own imaginary caseboard while Jack chain-smoked his way through the clues.

But then the cheese references started. And they never, ever stopped.

Every villain is a cheeselegger. Every sultry dame is compared to some exotic dairy platter. Characters swear on their grandmother’s cottage curds. At first it’s cute, like finding a hidden Mickey in an old Disney short. By hour three it feels like the game is winking at you so hard it’s developed a nervous tic. I caught myself groaning out loud when Jack quipped about hoping the robot bosses wouldn’t pull a “rule of three,” right before, surprise, they absolutely did. It’s the video game equivalent of that friend who can’t tell a story without quoting The Office every thirty seconds. Eventually you just want the story to breathe.

And that’s the real heartbreak here. The writing is so busy reminding you of better noir classics and golden-age cartoons that it forgets to let its own world exist for more than five seconds. Troy Baker and the rest of the voice cast do heroic work with the material, but even they can’t save lines that feel like they were generated by a “1930s slang + cheese puns” algorithm. I wanted to care about the racial tensions between bigger mice and smaller shrews. I wanted to feel the weight of Jack’s personal stakes. Instead I kept getting yanked out of the moment by another self-aware gag about how this is all just a video game, folks.

The Shooting Feels Surprisingly Good (Until You Start Thinking About It)

Let’s talk about the actual gunplay, because that’s where Mouse: P.I. for Hire shines brightest, at least on the surface.

This is a proper boomer shooter through and through, the kind that makes you nostalgic for the days when health pickups were scattered like confetti and movement was king. You start with a basic pistol and your bare paws, but before long you’re dual-wielding a tommy gun (sorry, “James Gun”), tossing dynamite, and melting enemies with the gloriously disgusting Devarnisher that strips cartoon flesh down to squeaky-clean skeletons. The movement suite feels fantastic. Double jump, dash, spinning tail hover, slide; Jack Pepper moves like a Looney Tunes character who accidentally swallowed a Red Bull and a copy of Doom Eternal.

Visually the game is an absolute stunner. That black-and-white sprite-and-3D hybrid look nails the 1930s cartoon aesthetic while still feeling crisp and modern. Reload animations have real personality. Blood (well, black ichor) splatters across the screen in satisfying bursts. For long stretches I was having an absolute blast simply existing in the moment, hopping between platforms, discovering secrets, and painting the town red. Or black. Whatever color cartoon mouse blood is supposed to be.

But even the combat has its quirks that start to grate. The shotgun sounds like a disappointed party popper despite looking like it should evaporate small buildings. Levels lean a little too heavily on arena fights where doors slam shut and waves of enemies pour in until the skull icon stops glowing. It’s fun the first dozen times. By the twentieth it starts feeling like the game ran out of ideas and just hit the “spawn more guys” button.

Health on normal difficulty is also ridiculously generous. I died more from boredom than actual threat in the back half of the campaign. Still, the roughly twelve-hour runtime never overstays its welcome if you’re purely in it for the retro shooting highs.

The Detective Part? Mostly Just for Show

Here’s where the wheels really start to wobble off the trenchcoat.

You’re playing a private investigator, right? The game keeps telling you that. Jack keeps muttering about needing the cash, about following leads, about being the little guy in a big corrupt world. Except the actual detective work is almost entirely automated. You find clues, they magically appear on the caseboard, and Jack just… intuits the next location. No deduction mini-games. No tough choices. No actual gumshoeing.

It’s like the developers remembered halfway through that noir needs mystery, then shrugged and said “eh, the shooting’s fun, let’s not overcomplicate it.”

Worse is the ludonarrative whiplash that hits like a cartoon anvil. Jack Pepper is supposedly this relatable everyman P.I. scraping by in Mouseburg. Meanwhile he’s casually slaughtering his way through entire police stations, burning down opera houses, and racking up a body count that would make John Wick blush. Nobody in the story seems particularly bothered by the trail of cartoon corpses he leaves behind. The mayor candidate he’s trying to protect just thanks him and moves on. It’s genuinely jarring.

I kept thinking back to classic noir where violence actually costs something. Where every gunshot leaves a moral bruise. Here the violence is just set dressing, bright and bouncy and consequence-free. The game wants you to feel the weight of its themes, its conspiracy, its social commentary. Then it lets you double-jump over those themes while dual-wielding tommy guns and cracking cheese jokes. The mismatch is impossible to ignore once you notice it.

When the References Become the Whole Meal

I get it. Retro revival games love their winks and nods. A steamboat named Willie? Cute. A spinach power-up that gives you Popeye arms? Adorable. But when every single line of dialogue is either a cheese pun, a cartoon reference, or a meta joke about video game tropes, the charm curdles fast. It starts to feel less like loving homage and more like insecurity, like the game doesn’t trust its own story enough to stand on its own two (four?) paws.

The hub world offers some welcome breathing room. Jack’s office, the bar, the upgrade shop; they all have that lived-in, smoky atmosphere I craved. And I’ll admit the baseball card minigame at the bar is an absolute delight. Pitching and batting with collectible cards, managing abilities, trying to score runs; it’s simple, addictive, and weirdly relaxing after blasting through another wave of goons. I lost more evenings than I care to admit just grinding for better cards.

But even that little oasis can’t fully distract from the bigger problem: Mouse: P.I. for Hire wants to be both a heartfelt noir tale and a silly Looney Tunes shooter at the same time, and it never quite figures out how to make those two halves kiss. The result is something that’s often fun in the moment yet strangely hollow when you set the controller down.

Verdict

Look, if you’re just here for stylish black-and-white cartoon violence and don’t mind the story getting in the way with endless puns, Mouse: P.I. for Hire delivers exactly what it promises on the tin. The shooting feels punchy, the art direction is gorgeous, and there are enough secrets and upgrades to keep completionists happy for a solid dozen hours. But the deeper you dig into its ambitions, the more the seams show. The noir aspirations collapse under the weight of its own jokes, and the detective fantasy never quite materializes beyond surface-level set dressing.

It’s the kind of game I wanted to love unreservedly, the way I still love dusting off my old Chandler paperbacks on rainy nights. Instead it left me with that familiar bittersweet feeling: plenty of style, not quite enough substance, and a lingering aftertaste of slightly overripe cheddar.