{"id":136969,"date":"2026-04-27T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/#article-200057"},"modified":"2026-04-27T17:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T17:00:00","slug":"review-mouse-p-i-for-hire-switch-2-a-bold-risk-taking-fps-and-a-fine-achievement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2026\/04\/27\/review-mouse-p-i-for-hire-switch-2-a-bold-risk-taking-fps-and-a-fine-achievement\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Mouse: P.I. For Hire (Switch 2) – A Bold, Risk-Taking FPS, And A Fine Achievement"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n
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\"Mouse:<\/a>
Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Handheld\/Undocked)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With Mouse: P.I. for Hire<\/a>, I\u2019ve got very little to complain about, so for the sake of balance, first I\u2019ll gently shine a light on its near-absurd mishmash of influences.<\/p>\n

The striking rubber-hose animation USP hails from the 1920s. The 11-hour story, with its tough, unsentimental protagonist, and its twists and turns through layers of complicated corruption and conspiracy, grows directly from the roots of film and literary noir \u2013 most often associated with the 1940s. The hyperactive, running-and-gunning gameplay weaves and blasts as hectically as any \u2018boomer shooter\u2019 from the 1990s \u2013 and even then, a number of quality-of-life features seem to have origins from the 2000s and beyond.<\/p>\n

It took an hour, maybe two, for the game to shine for me \u2013 but once it did, my playthrough went on and on delightfully. The slow start was forgiven in no time, and this tale of mouse P.I. Jack Pepper soon became one I needed<\/em> to see through to its conclusion.<\/p>\n

\"Mouse:<\/a>
Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Handheld\/Undocked)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Early on, Jack receives a heads-up that an old associate has gone missing, and the investigations that follow delve deep into a sequence of potentially connected mysteries.<\/p>\n

Soon, worldbuilding and storytelling titbits shone through like light from cracks in a secretive doorway. I learned about some big war that happened in the not-too-distant past \u2013 a societal rift so strong that the era beforehand is now known as \u2018The Old World\u2019. Elsewhere, shrews \u2014 looked down upon by snobby denizens as an inferior, poverty-stricken class \u2014 have been disappearing. Next, a politician, thanks to Jack\u2019s quick wits during an investigation into the Mouseburg Opera House, avoids assassination.<\/p>\n

More and more threads combine within an ever-tightening narrative \u2013 a narrative instigated by some combination of a group of fascist rodents, scientists experimenting with forbidden secrets, cults, and, at times, more horrific creatures.<\/p>\n

\"Mouse:<\/a>
Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Handheld\/Undocked)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For me, every bit of the adventure landed well. Sure, the storytelling is a little \u2018tropey\u2019, and you\u2019ll never hear as many cheese puns as you do within the first few hours, but the well-written script is delivered with high-quality, delightful voice acting. What\u2019s more, the storytelling verve \u2014 the visuals, cutscenes, and the mood-setting music \u2014 leave just the right amount of space for characterisation, and for one or two genuine emotional beats.<\/p>\n

These great strengths smoothed over my initial concerns that the FPS gameplay might get repetitive quickly. There is a slight sense of routine to the shooting: you reach new areas and fight off waves of enemies that pour out of doors, the start and finish of each wave marked by the ding ding ding<\/em> of a boxing match. 90% of the combat is structured like this \u2014 essentially as arena battles \u2014 with the rest made up of some bosses and some more organic \u2018chance\u2019 encounters in hallways, sewers, woodlands, and the like.<\/p>\n

Happily, a sense of progression soon kicks in, keeping things fresh. Suddenly I was unlocking new moves \u2014 double jumps, grappling hooks \u2014 and new guns and powerful upgrades. The challenge amped up, and I found myself fully engaged with switching between shotguns, automatics, bazookas, and more, while launching myself around areas in the game with a slickness that contrasted the slower, laborious-to-produce look of the animation style.<\/p>\n

\"Mouse:<\/a>
Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Docked)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And sure, it seems certain that plenty of hard-wrought animator sweat went into this production from start to finish. Debut developers Fumi Games, from Warsaw, even lampoon this idea early on during an incursion into a shady film studio. Hunched at their desks, mousy animators sketch away while a gunfight erupts around them. On and on they draw, without looking up.<\/p>\n

Except for the environments, which are rendered in 3D and do a decent job at keeping up with the overall style, every little detail is animated, and it all looks impressive: new upgrades to your guns clicking into place; violent kicks to the faces of enemies; shoving a fistful of bullets into the shotgun to reload; the car as you drive around the very Cuphead<\/a>-feeling map.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the same thing during the kinetic combat. You launch into the air, a cartoonish poison-laden, gangster-dissolving gun chugging into gear. You whip 180 degrees, catch a glimpse of bat-wielding, hand-drawn mobs chasing you and a few more cartoon goons lumbering over behind them. All the while, animated bullets fizz by your head from the cartoon gunmen eyeing you up in the distance.<\/p>\n

\"Mouse:<\/a>
Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Docked)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Even the moments of downtime between missions, when you return home to piece together clues, are teeming with animated characters. There are a few limitations in the style \u2014 the mice, rats, and shrews are paper-like and flat and can look as much if you catch them from the wrong angle \u2014 but then animating side views and back views for the abundance of assets in the game would have been a task as large as a post-WW1 zeppelin, and we all know how that ended.<\/p>\n

I was briefly disappointed by a lack of motion controls. I tried out mouse controls for the review (but come on \u2013 is anyone really<\/em> playing like that?) and sure, they work. Performance, while never distracting me, did stutter at times. Interestingly, Mouse: P.I. for Hire worked a lot better in the (I believe) locked 30fps of \u2018Quality\u2019 mode than the more ambitious frame rate of \u2018Performance\u2019 mode. (If you\u2019re interested, the team released a full breakdown of the specs on the game\u2019s website<\/a>).<\/p>\n

But these issues were never more than minor distractions. One more concern \u2014 that collecting clues is a shallow experience achieved by completing levels \u2014 may disappoint some people, but I didn\u2019t mind, and I enjoyed seeing the collected photos, notes, and secret letters take shape as I pinned them to my corkboard back in the office.<\/p>\n

\"Mouse:<\/a>
Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Docked)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To riff a moment on noir classic Chinatown<\/strong>, let me sum things up by saying this: When a game is right, it\u2019s right. And this one here is right<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n

Initially, I wasn\u2019t sure how well the mixture of influences and styles was working, but it\u2019s a testament to the attention to detail and polish that\u2019s gone into the whole production that Mouse: P.I. for Hire achieves such a high score. The story takes a bit of time to become truly gripping, but it does so at the exact same time as the combat and style reach new levels of quality, and I couldn\u2019t help but be impressed.<\/p>\n

While I can\u2019t say I am stunned or in awe of the clue-collecting, I very much enjoyed my playthrough. Mouse: PI for Hire feels fresh and fun<\/em>, and I only have praise for the whole team who produced it. This animated noir mystery is a great achievement. It takes risks, it\u2019s challenging, it strives to be bold – and it works.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Handheld\/Undocked) With Mouse: P.I. for Hire, I\u2019ve got very little to complain about, so for the sake of balance, first I\u2019ll gently shine a light on its near-absurd mishmash of influences. The striking rubber-hose animation USP hails from the 1920s. The 11-hour story, with its tough, unsentimental protagonist, and its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136969\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}