Mouse P.I. For Hire is one of the coolest shooters I have played in a long time, mixing hardboiled noir, rubber-hose cartoon chaos, and genuinely great gunplay
Some games look exciting the first time you see them and then quietly disappear. Mouse P.I. For Hire did the opposite for me. I still remember those early clips years ago when the developers were just showing off that incredible retro rubber-hose animation style working inside a first-person shooter, and even back then it felt like one of those ideas that was either going to become something special or collapse under its own gimmick. I am very happy to say it became something special. Not just because it looks different, but because it actually follows through with strong writing, great action, and a world that feels way more fully realized than I expected.
You play as Jack Pepper, an ex-beat cop turned private investigator voiced by Troy Baker, and he absolutely nails it. There is a looseness and swagger to the performance that fits this world perfectly. He sounds like he is enjoying every line, but never in a way that undercuts the story. That matters because Mouse P.I. For Hire is balancing a lot of tones at once. It is doing grimy 1930s detective noir, complete with corrupt politicians, dirty cops, dead actresses, suspicious reporters, and the classic femme fatale energy, while also letting all of that exist inside a cartoon world full of visual slapstick and absurd enemies. Somehow, it works.
The story kept me hooked almost the entire way through. Mouseburg is not just a cool backdrop. It feels like a proper place full of weird personalities, old grudges, and connected secrets. You are constantly meeting memorable characters, talking through leads, and pushing deeper into a conspiracy that keeps expanding in interesting ways. There were definitely moments near the end where I thought the game was about ready to wrap things up, only for it to throw one more mission or twist at me. Normally that would annoy me, but here the writing and performances were good enough that I kept going happily. I genuinely wanted to know where it was all heading.
It also helps that the dialogue is great. This is one of those games where conversations are not just functional breaks between shootouts. They are fun to listen to. The script fully commits to the noir style, but it is not trying too hard to sound clever. It feels natural inside this bizarre world, and the full voice cast sells it. Troy Baker gets a lot of the spotlight, understandably, but the supporting performances deserve credit too. There is a confidence to the whole presentation that makes Mouseburg easy to sink into.
Then there is the actual shooting, and this is where Mouse P.I. For Hire really surprised me on PS5. Boomer shooters can be very hit or miss on controller. Sometimes the sensitivity feels off, the combat speed feels awkward, or the aim assist just is not tuned well enough to keep up with the chaos. None of that happened here. This game feels beautifully dialed in for a controller. Moving, aiming, dashing, snapping between enemies, all of it feels smooth and responsive in a way that instantly gave me confidence. I never had that annoying sensation that I was playing the compromised version of a PC-first shooter.
The arsenal is also excellent. You have your expected staples like the pistol, shotgun, and the James Gun, which is basically the game’s tommy gun equivalent, but the weirder weapons are where things get especially fun. There is an ice weapon that freezes enemies, a cannon that hits with ridiculous force, and the Devarnisher, one of my favorites, which melts enemies down until all that is left is a cartoony skeleton. Enemy reactions are a huge part of why combat is so satisfying. Blow them up and they burst apart into ash. Drop something heavy on them and they get squashed like a proper old cartoon. Melt them, burn them, freeze them, launch them, the game commits to every bit of animated violence with real style.
The guns themselves deserve praise too. They do not just look good, they sound good. Reloads, idle animations, recoil, all of it has that stretchy rubber-hose energy where weapons feel alive in your hands. Upgrading them makes a noticeable difference as well. Once I had the James Gun and Devarnisher powered up, I found myself relying on those two a lot because they were just so effective and fun to use. That does create one of the game’s few issues though. Not every weapon stays equally useful. The double-barreled shotgun, in particular, looks and sounds like it should be devastating, but never really hit with the force I wanted from it.
Movement is another strong point, even if I wish the game pushed it further in combat. Jack can dash, grapple with his tail, wall-run, and generally move through levels with a nice sense of speed and freedom. Exploration benefits from that a lot. Levels are packed with secrets, side content, hidden pickups, and extra rewards for anyone willing to check corners and chase optional paths. Some of the environments are fantastic too, with just enough visual variety to prove the art style has more range than black-and-white alleyways and crime scenes. A couple of later surprises, especially when the game starts playing with a different visual mood, were a real treat.
My one real frustration is that those traversal tools are not always used as aggressively as they could have been once a fight starts. There were plenty of arenas where I wanted more grapple points, more reasons to chain wall-runs into attacks, and more encounter design built around vertical movement. The combat is already good, so pushing that side harder could have made it even better. Enemy variety also starts to flatten out a bit as the campaign goes on, and while the bosses are a lot more inventive, some standard encounters lose a little momentum by the late game.
Still, those are relatively small complaints in a game that gets so much right. Mouse P.I. For Hire has style for days, but crucially, it is not only style. It has a great detective story, an excellent central performance, sharp dialogue, fantastic-feeling controller shooting, and some of the most distinctive animation work I have seen in a modern FPS. More than anything, I just love that this game exists in finished form and turned out this good. It started as one of those “that looks cool” projects you assume might never fully come together. Instead, it absolutely did. And on PS5, it is a blast. Thanks for reading!
