Fumi Games/PlaySide
PC, Xbox, PlayStation, Switch 2
$30US/$39CDN
I love this small trend we've been seeing lately of games using the old timey "rubber hose" animation style from the dawning age of cartoons. Cuphead--which I don't have the patience to get good at--kicked it off and there's been a few other examples since then, but MOUSE: P.I. For Hire was in my wheelhouse by being a first-person shooter. It nailed the visual style, had the music to back it up and also some top shelf voice talent to power what was supposed to be an fun and cheesy (pun intended) noir story campaign. Reviews from both critics and fans seemed to concur so I was excited to jump in.
Fumi Games nailed all the stuff that makes this cool to watch but as a shooter, I don't know what everyone else is smoking because I found it bloated, slow, almost insultingly easy and worst of all, boring.
This Is Not A Damn Boomer Shooter!
I'm going to get extra high on my soap box for a minute. There's been a lot of abuse of the term Boomer Shooter lately. It was created as an insult toward retro FPS design and the older players that came up on it, but which the community has since embraced because we see those designs as good things. To us, it means shooters that are fast, reward exploration with lots of secrets to find, have a variety of unique weapons, all of which have their place, a similar variety of enemies and difficult but fair combat that requires you to think smart and also fast. But now, the term has apparently been stretched and mutilated to mean "any first-person shooter that isn't Call of Duty or Battlefield".
NO I SAY! This term is now a thing so use it properly! There is nothing about MOUSE: P.I. For Hire that's remotely like a Boomer Shooter and in fact, it has most of the trappings of modern shooters that make old school players roll their eyes. Despite making constant references jokey to older shooters, it hasn't learned a thing from them.
Levels are very linear, but it still has a key to grab you by the nose and lead you to the next objective. It's crammed with every modern FPS trope including a dash, multi-jump and even bloody wall running at one point, but the combat's also sluggish and doesn't reward quick thinking or reflexes. There are secrets but many of them are so in plain sight that it's an insult to call them that. There are a lot of cool weapons, but many are clunky to use so you'll often rely on two or three, especially once you get them upgraded and you're rarely short on ammo. You'll fight the same handful of enemies over and over again and it'll even hoodwink you by reskinning them sometimes. And as for the combat? It's moving from one usually small arena to another surrounded by doors enemies will spawn out of--telegraphed no less--until the arbitrary point the game decides it's done. There are bosses but they're all trivially easy, save for the final one which is one of the worst designed and unbalanced boss encounters I've seen in a long time.
I'm not going to say it's a bad shooter necessarily because it does everything competently, but terms have meanings and calling this a Boomer Shooter is a straight up misrepresentation, to the point where I think people should be mass reporting the tag on the store listing as incorrect. You can do that by clicking the + next to the tags in the listing, hovering over Boomer Shooter and clicking the flag icon.
Bloated Yet Pushy
The incredible visuals, music, voice cast and even parts of the story could make me forgive the forgettable shooting if it was engaging throughout, but this is another case of a game that's bloated and needed a lot of belt tightening.
The industry has become obsessed with game length and think that a longer game equals better value. Again, no! If your game is 50 hours long and only 45 of those are interesting, that's worse to me than if it's too short. I spent 17 hours with MOUSE: P.I. For Hire and there's no reason it couldn't have been a much more enjoyable 10.
Most of the missions move along briskly and don't take too long but in between them, you return to your hub area where you can buy ammo and gun upgrades, pin clues to your detective board (which is ultimately meaningless because the mysteries all solve themselves) and talk to various characters to get more exposition or the occasional side quest. They all have unique personalities, the writing is good and often pretty funny in a hokey noir kind of way and the actors are all doing a stellar job. Troy Baker voices your character and well, he never misses. Thing is, many of these chats are lengthy and you can't do anything except stand there and listen as the character loops the same animation. Having a cooldown period between the action is nice, but these interludes take so long that you're practically asleep when it's time to get back at it.
There's also this baseball card game thing you can play to earn tokens that you can use to get a special unlock, but it's very slow moving, and until you buy or find enough extra cards to brute force it, the AI opponent straight up cheats. You have to spend some money to play a round and whether you win or lose, that money's gone. If you win, you get a token and you need 20 to get the special unlock. If you lose, you're out the money. If you tie, you're also out the money! What the Hell's that about?! I understand this is optional, but a side activity like this shouldn't feel like work and that the game is rigged against you.
Speaking of optional things, a bit of advice: If you want to complete the side quests, make sure you take your time in the levels because many of them will get locked off from you if you reach certain checkpoints. You're given no warning of this and you can't go back. Even though there's a world map you can freely drive around, most levels become inaccessible once you've completed them so if you really want that side quest, be prepared to go back to an old save or start the campaign over again.
This contradicts the design of the levels themselves, which are always pushing you forward and don't seem to want you to take your time exploring or stopping to admire things. I don't know what the designers were thinking with this, but when I realized I couldn't complete certain things I wanted to because I was following their linear path too well, it really took the wind out of my sails. This is something they could absolutely fix in an update and I hope they do.
Different Is Not A Synonym For Great
I said up top that I love to see more games trying to use old-school animation as the basis for their art and themes. But before starting the game, I was reading somewhere that the fanbases of titles like Cuphead and Bendy & the Ink Machine are often passionate to the point of zealotry and will forgive a lot of otherwise poor design to defend anything that uses this style because they want to see more of it. That's anecdotal and I don't know how true it is, but it would certainly explain the nearly universal praise I've seen for MOUSE: P.I. For Hire.
Nothing the game does is bad, except maybe the final boss fight and locking off side missions. It's a lie to call it a Boomer Shooter, but the gun play is still fine. The story's cool and well written. The characters are great, as is the voice acting. And indeed, the art, animations and music are fantastic. But it's also too long and the gun play could have been great instead of just fine, especially with how many times it references older shooters.
Just because a game is doing something different, that doesn't excuse the things it could also have done better. If people really like MOUSE: P.I. For Hire as much as the Steam reviews seem to indicate, that's great and I'm glad they enjoy it. But as someone who was told this was a Boomer Shooter with rubber hose art, I was quite disappointed, though I still think there's a lot to like here.
Personally, if you like first-person shooters and that old-timey art style, I wouldn't skip MOUSE: P.I. For Hire, but I would wait for a deep sale. That's ultimately what I wish I did.
