It took me all of about five seconds to fall for Mouse PI For Hire

I love a game with a strong vision. I’m not talking about aesthetics here, or a dedication to an ethos; I’m talking about cheese. Mouse PI For Hire is a game that knows its cheese. It has cheese oozing through its pores, and every time I meet someone named Cornelius Stilton or Jack Pepper, I know it’s going to be a gouda time. Sorry.

Mouse PI is a 2.5D (the characters are 2D sprites, the environments are not) first-person shooter about a private detective who also happens to be a mouse. The cast is mostly mice, actually, with a small smattering of voles for good measure. The shooting parts play as they often do, but the real meat, for me at least, is everything outside of that. There’s a whole mouse world out there to explore, and the preview gave me a taste for more.

It took all of about 5 seconds for me to fall for Mouse PI. The wiggly animations and over-the-top, serious narration somehow merge to form something that’s beyond hardboiled, with the VO from Troy Baker adding the perfect level of grit to Jack Pepper’s thoughts. The black and white, over-the-hill private detective schtick has been done to death, and yet with this little furry twist, it feels fresh again.

The one action level I got to play through saw me, Jack Pepper, descending through a secret laboratory. I’d been tipped off that a mad scientist was doing mad scientist things, and, as any good private detective would do, I strapped my handgun to my waist and delved as deep as I could. There were robot starlets, giant pools of acid, and a gang of cultists.

The path through the secret lab was fairly linear, with a few fairly light puzzle rooms and a handful of boss fights thrown in for good measure. The latter were perhaps the highlight of my time in the depths – the first boss I fight is a recreation of the scientist’s lost love, a starlet, recreated in iron. She fires lasers and attempts to riddle me with bullets. Each subsequent boss fight builds on the first, with ramping abilities that imitate the first, only much bigger and much more erratic.

The shooting is as good as the boomer variety will allow, but where Mouse PI stands apart is (obviously) in the presentation; each of the weapons I used felt unique, both in looks and in practice. Reloads are humorous, swapping to weapons has them twisting and bouncing in ways they really shouldn’t – the handful of tools available in the preview gave me a right laugh every time I used them, from the humble fists to the caustic de-varnisher.

Once I’m out of the action and out of that lab, the perspective changes to a top-down overworld – kind of like old-school Final Fantasy games – where I’m able to cruise in Jack’s car, seeing the sights. It’s a cute addition, and seeing all those locked locations really whets the appetite for more detecting, and probably more shooting.

Heading back to the office, I’m treated to an open slice of the city. A block is there for me to explore, and in it I find a ton of characters, a few shops, and a shop proprietor who doesn’t look at all happy to see me. It’s this bit that cements Mouse PI for me – it needs the calm of wandering to elevate the daftness of the shooting. The small area I’m allowed in during the preview is packed with jokes on sandwich boards and posters. Everything is as you would expect, only slightly different.

As I entered Jack’s office, I was hoping for his old police badge, a cigar on the desk, and a corkboard peppered with monochrome twine. It’s all there, because of course it is. Jack may be a mouse, but he’s still tired, and he’s seen a lot. I put the evidence from the secret lab on the wall and realized there’s a lot more to this than I thought.

Mouse PI For Hire is a great example of a joke concept taking the source material seriously, and despite the silly presentation, the foundations are solid. If the full release is just this, but a lot more, I’m down. Mouse PI comes out on April 16, and you can be edam sure I’ll be there on day one.