Mouse: P.I. For Hire review: A beautifully animated FPS that struggles with its own ambition

I want to love Mouse: P.I. for Hire much more than I do. Throughout my review period, every time I felt frustrated or annoyed by its shortcomings, I kept telling myself that at least it looks amazing.

But after 15 hours of repetitive and bland mission design, a dull plot, and the game losing faith in its own setting, I can't help but be disappointed, even when there is still plenty to admire in this passion project from a talented team.

Make no mistake: Mouse is a decent and occasionally fun experience. It will have a fiercely loyal cult following one day. It's just that its gameplay never lives up to the potential and superlative visual style.

It's important to note right away that Mouse: P.I. doesn't remain true to its stylistic origins. While it happily references 1930s serials, cartoons, and movies, these influences remain superficial at best.

At worst, Mouse: P.I. is a mess of pop culture references ranging from Robocop to Star Wars to even quoting Soul Asylum. Every gag is on the table, regardless of how it fits the narrative. Numerous times during my playthrough, I found myself rolling my eyes in a bad way at some of the dialogue and out-of-place attempts at a film reference.

It's such a weird, tonally off-putting decision to make, considering what a rich period the developers have to draw from. At times, Mouse: P.I. leans heavily into the detective genre, cribbing from Humphrey Bogart to Ida Lupino, and the results are fantastic. There's a tremendous joy in spotting timeless films and cartoon variants of iconic actors. It's far less interesting to suddenly have Jack, our hero, yell out famous memes from Revenge of the Sith.

The game is also weirdly insecure about what it is. At times, it just stops dead in its tracks to make fun of genre tropes, especially when it commits to doing them anyway. But pointing out that something is a tired and dated mechanic doesn't soften the blow; it just highlights how you're not doing anything new while sarcastically quipping to the player about it.

If this were a one-time thing, I wouldn't mind so much. But Mouse: P.I. keeps coming back to the same well over and over again during its super-bloated duration. After 15 hours of the same thing, when Jack comments once again, during an extended back-and-forth through a poorly planned level, how annoying all this is, I can't help but agree.

It's all so unnecessary, too. Others have shown that audiences will go for any kind of craziness, just as long as you're consistent with your material. Who Framed Roger Rabbit works as a cartoon and as a Noir because it commits to the bit. Nobody bats an eye over Peter Jackson's Meet the Feebles and its outrageous The Deer Hunter parody because it refuses to explain itself any further.

But Mouse: P.I. can't help but explain and then apologize for itself over and over again. Hidden walls have "Just a normal wall" written on them, while momentarily locked doors draw attention to the mechanic with a snide "Locked, for now" sign. Invisible walls are called out as a gag, even when the game utilizes them extensively.

Then there's the lack of enemy variety, which wouldn't be an issue in a shorter experience. But because Mouse: P.I. insists on overstaying its welcome, I lost count of how many hundreds of times I shot the same goons with the same dying animations.

For the first couple of levels, it's a lot of fun. There's a novelty to seeing Betty Boop-style baddies lose their heads or melt into a puddle of bones. Then you realize that's all you're getting, and it loses much of the charm.

I did love the couple of moments where Mouse: P.I. goes off the rails entirely. There's an entire level that feels like a playable Squirrel Nut Zippers music video that is the most fun the game has with itself. It's just a shame that it's also completely in opposition to the style and tone of the rest of the experience.

Weirder still is when Mouse: P.I. leans into High on Life territory. Such antics would work in a more Animaniac or Freakazoid-style title, but these instances come so out of left field they feel entirely removed from the first half, which plays itself more straight.

Mouse: P.I. for Hire rose to prominence with a tech demo in 2023, and it's still easy to see why it made such a massive impact. On a purely audiovisual level, it is one of the most attractive and fun indie experiences all year.

Everything from the animations to the banging soundtrack is perfect. It's as simple as that.

Yes, I wish there were more variety in the animations in general, and accessibility isn't exactly great, either. I had numerous issues with trying to locate special items or collectibles, and there are no settings to make this easier for folks like me who have impairments. Granted, for the most part, this doesn't detract from the actual gameplay, as enemies are easy to spot and the controls are fairly simple. But it is a consideration for those with even worse disabilities.

What is more annoying is that if you complete a level without finding all the collectibles, you can't revisit those places at all. It's entirely one and done, and to get everything, you'll have to start from an earlier save or an entirely new run.

Some levels also feature immensely frustrating cut-off points, where the game just prevents you from doubling back to explore. There's no warning when these points happen, so your first run with Mouse: P.I. will most certainly be an exercise in annoyance.

Mouse: P.I. is also a long game for the price. At just 30 Euros, you get a lot of bang for your buck. I appreciate that the developers want to throw everything they can into the mix, but the scope eats away at the quality.

For example, there are a lot of guns, but I'd be hard-pressed to truly distinguish most of them from one another. There's a shotgun and a double-barreled shotgun. The latter sets enemies on fire, but the former can also do that if you eat one of the pepper upgrades available. There's a devarnisher that melts enemies, and early on, it serves as basically a one-hit-kill weapon. Then, suddenly, most enemies just suck up the poison without much resistance.

Similarly, you get a bazooka and dynamite, and both operate the same way. Some boss fights effectively force you to use the Tommy Gun, which seems to have been a developer favorite. It's fun to use, no question about it, but it gets tedious after dozens of hours.

Finally, there's the detective board, where you pin the clues of the three major cases that drive the narrative. In theory, it's a great idea. In practice, you don't do anything with it. Most of the clues are hidden away in levels without any indication that you're supposed to look for them, and some are so obtuse that I only found them by accident. When you pin them to the board, Jack simply draws conclusions that lead to new levels without any player input. It's just an additional mechanic to a game that works better without it.

This all comes across as very negative, and I acknowledge that. For about half the time I spent with Mouse: P.I., I had a lot of fun. It's the other half, the one that just kept going well after it had worn out its welcome, that weighs everything down.

I had high hopes for this game, and some of them were met. Others missed the boat entirely. On top of that, the review copy of the game is tremendously buggy. A late update, which is ready for public release, fixed a lot of the issues, but many remain.

During my time with the game, I experienced stuck menus, broken quests, hard crashes to the desktop, and moments when the game just stopped spawning enemies on its numerous arena combat sequences. Earlier sections of the game felt far more polished than the latter half, which just feeds into my belief that this would be a better experience at half the length.

But, at the same time, it's so beautiful, and the soundtrack is fantastic, and everyone clearly has poured their hearts into it. That has to count for something, and it does. I'm not made of stone. I think most should give Mouse: P:I a go, and many will undoubtedly love it.

Just don't go in expecting the world. It'll only break your heart.