MOUSE: P.I. For Hire

Story: Solid Gameplay: Fun but lowkey too easy Art Style: Goated Audio: Music is vibe. 8/10

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A Rubber-Hose 1930s FPS adventure with glorious MICE! MOUSE: P.I For Hire is a Rubber-Hose styled FPS Game by Fumi Games. Following Private Investigator, Jack Pepper as he unravels a multi-thread mystery like a stick of string cheese using both his wits and his skills with the gun. The game provides a pretty beefy FPS campaign with many sights, sounds, and secrets to discover, a monochrome cast of colorful characters, and tons of weapons to get your cheesy hands on. It's all in good fun even despite it being a bit too long for how much unique content is paced out and being more FPS than Mystery game. Gameplay of MOUSE primarily features it's FPS combat first and foremost, with the detective work aspects being more so a mantle for the narrative and the reason why you go to place to place. The level design has a very big "arenas connected by hallways design" with the occasional secret sprinkled within, similar to Serious Sam or the New Doom Trilogy. While sometimes you do occasionally have the level loop in on itself, it's mostly a very linear shooter. Jack's arsenal is quite vast, with some familiar faces and more specialty weapons. There's stuff like a weak but accurate "Mouser" pistol, a standard boomstick, and a all-around reliable Tomm-I mean James Gun. But also provides a variety of odd-ball weapons like a entire cannonball shooting cannon, a gun that fires out head-splitting brainwaves, or a weapon that basically shoots "The Dip" from Roger Rabbit. You can even gain weapon upgrades that add alt-fires and extra buffs from schematics hidden around the levels or from quests. There's also a handful of power-ups Jack can collect on his adventures, most being a Pepper to really "HEAT" up the battle, while others come in during specific arenas. Enemies come in all shapes and sizes, uniforms and attire but generally all follow the same small pool of archetypes. You got enemies that approach in melee, foes using certain weapons like a shotgun or machinegun, and a few specially enemies like charging tanks, teleporting snipers, and annoying flying enemies. Now the main issue with this well rounded cast of foes is... that's it. The introduction of new challengers tapers off extremely fast, save for the surprisingly large amount of unique boss fights on deck. It's quiet a shame, cause the game absolutely justifies it's length narratively. But you'll quickly start to fall into a familiar dance with the combat as new features start to appear less and less frequently. And it kinda boils down to just pretty easy busywork. Heck, I even INCREASED the difficulty up to max and even then only a few segments really gave me a tough time. But shooting things isn't entirely what this game is about. While most of the actual in-depth gameplay mechanics are for that, there's a lick of sleuthing mixed in. In-between levels or segments during the levels themselves are slower areas ripe for talking, looking for clues, and soaking in the environment. These are a fun way to express the game's plot, setting, or both. The majority of these chatty plot events converge at Jack's P.I. Office, featuring a plethora of things to do as you return from playing through levels. You can upgrade your weapons using schematics found in the levels or completing side quests. Spend your money collected from enemies or safes through the levels on ammo, missed collectables, or a match of a optional baseball card game. As well as placing your collected clues and having more levels being opened up as the case progresses. While the game very clearly has the most bare-bones detective mechanics, it's service for the game's setting and plot progression is enough to make it feel justified. Stylewise, this is easily MOUSE's greatest boon ever since it's prototype builds were teased: it's B&W Rubber hose artstyle. Everything from the enemies, the weapons, and props are all depicted with bouncy, springy, and above all else, bouncy rubber hose animation, along with a exclusively B&W color palette. There's obviously gonna be a comparison to Cuphead's usage since it's a indie videogame using the rubber hose style and it's all done on just about the same tier of animation quality. On the complete other side of the spectrum, the levels themselves are completely 3D-modeled and are appropriately all in B&W. And the sheer variety of level themes is absolutely off the wall. You got city streets, sewer levels cause of course, secret laboratories, the swamps, totally not Hollywood backlots, and it just keeps going and going. Even when you're going back to a general area you've already been to, there's often something brand new in the same setting to keep the scenery feeling fresh. It's also really impressive that despite having a pretty limited color palette, they were able to make sure the player can understand what's important to the level by usage of lighter colors and not-so-subtle hints that are played off as cartoon gags. The music is also mostly filled with jazz-y tunes that fit the vibes of a 1930s cartoon and a detective noir pretty seemlessly. They even have that thing where the music dynamically starts and ends depending if you're in combat or not. Overall, I think MOUSE: P.I For Hire is a Grade-A example of a not-so-perfect gameplay loop made up with superb art direction and theming makes for a very unique FPS title. As the game's core of being a FPS is legitimately really solid at it's basis, the issue is that it's too afraid to push outside of it's fundamentals to have a well-rounded roster of fearsome foes, save for the sheer variety boss fights. It just leads to a good gameplay loop that just lasts a tad too long for the game's roughly 15-16 hour runtime. Even on the hardest skill it becomes a cakewalk if you're somewhat familiar with FPS games. But everything else surrounding the game, like the characters, artstyle, the music, and sheer amount of places to see is enough to help counter that weight. It's absolutely the one thing I want to see the upcoming story DLC attempt to work on. As right now the game is like a piece of swiss cheese, very dang tasty and fun but filled with noticeable holes. But like another cheese, only time will tell if it'll age gracefully.