Jack Pepper spends most of Mouse: P.I. For Hire chasing a missing persons case through Mouseburg, a detective-noir city rendered in black-and-white rubber hose animation and backed by a lively jazz soundtrack. Troy Baker voices Pepper, who follows crooked cops, slippery politicians, charming socialites and tenacious reporters through a mystery that keeps widening as it goes.
The game reaches its high-stakes finale after about a dozen or so hours, and the journey is strongest when it is moving fast. The gunplay and movement feel fantastic, and the boss battles are a highlight, including one against a man who cycled between windows on different floors of a house and another that had Pepper using a flashlight to damage an apparition in a graveyard.
That momentum also masks a softer center. The action combat lacks depth, and the review says Pepper often does the sleuthing for you: clues are automatically placed on a board in his office, while quests update with where to go and who to talk to next. The result is a game that looks and sounds like a throwback to 1930s cartoon history, but plays more like a guided tour than a hard-boiled investigation.
There is still plenty to dig into between story beats. Levels move from opera houses to swamps to production studios, with secret areas hiding money and collectibles, and with items or photographs scattered around Mouseburg to finish side quests for the city’s residents. Extra baseball cards can even be found for a turn-based card game at the bar downtown, giving the world more to do than the main case alone.
That balance is what defines Mouse: P.I. For Hire. It is a tribute to century-old cartoons such as Steamboat Willie, but the review finds that its more adult themes and brisk pacing are what give it shape, even if it leaves the player wishing for more room to do the detective work by hand. As Game Informer put it, the reviewer “would've loved to do more of my own sleuthing to get to the bottom of things.”