Every so often, not often enough, there comes a game that not only lives up to the hype, but has some very pleasant surprises as well! Mouse P.I. was announced a little over a year ago, when Steamboat Willy became public domain. It caught many eyes with its 1930's animation and film noir style in the wonderful First Person Shooter style. It was hard to imagine how they would pull off a Betty Boop style animation in a 3D world, but it actually works. It's so true to 30's cartoon style that I felt like stockpiling my booze to foil Eliot Ness and his Untouchables! And prohibition was more in the 1920's! This game's got style!
What took me next was the controls. The walking, the jumping, the basic movements are very smooth. Moving through the strange art style in 3D did show that the NPC's were 2D in a 3D enviornment, very much like Doom. You can see their edges as you move. It looks so stylistic and strange but I absolutely love it. The gangland violence is also very cartoony. Instead of blood, it looks more like ink coming out. Their heads come off like old Tom and Jerry cartoons but it reacts like Itchy and Scratchy. The Turpentine gun makes them turn into a skeleton before they fall into bones and the TNT makes them into piles of ash, as it should.
Instead of letting you get lost in levels, though, they have an investigative supplement of dusting for footprints that shows you where to go next. This is much in the vain of Bioshock Infinite or Batman Arkham Asylum. You also collect clues that you pin onto your cork board, as well as baseball cards. Yes, you collect baseball cards and can also find comic strips here and there if you search thoroughly enough. Money is also a thing in this game, and you can find more of it the more you search for secrets and behind objects.
That's not to say that sometimes the levels do get a little confusing in the wayfinder and the instructions of where to go and what to do. It does get a little crazy when you go to the place that is shown and it turns out you need to use another route or someone will be standing in front of you or you didn't see that one object that you need to go pick up. It's not a game breaker but it does get a little annoying. One fun little shout out was, in true Dick Tracy NES fashion, you drive your car across the map with crappy controls. It can also be read as a sort of Cuphead type level map.
The weapons are basically from Doom or Duke Nukem 3D and that's alright. The Super Shotgun is not exactly a highlight, though. It is cool that it lights enemies on fire, but that's about the best thing with it, even at its highest upgrade. The star of the show is more the Tommy Gun, or the "James Gun" as this game calls it. It does the best damage in the best amount of time with the most accuracy and it just feels good to use. The same cannot be said about the starting pistol. It's supposed to be a .44 magnum but plays and sounds more like a pop gun. It's handy in a fight and fine otherwise, but I feel like giving it more of a meaty sound with a better recoil could have made it a better weapon. The funny thing about the D-Varnisher gun is that it uses terpentine as ammo, which is one of the ingredients for "dip" in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Nice little side note, if that was purposeful.
The enemies are plentiful, and there are several variations of them both physically and by class. There's the regular enemies, regular enemies with guns, bigger guards with machine guns, snipers, big huge charging tough guys and tiny little guys that try to get close so they can pull a bomb and explode. They all have better ways to kill them with specific guns or even the shield guys who require more explosives to be efficiently killed. This mob of enemies can get rather plentiful but I feel like it never reaches too high of a levels repetitiveness. It's an old style FPS, if you weren't prepared for monster closets and high caliber ambushes, then you need to get with it.
The boss fights are fun and challenging, aside from a few. I loved the ghost boss girl and the use of the flashlight, it gave the flashlight more to do than just random dark spaces you needed to explore. The disappearing opera phantom was annoying more than anything else. The worst of the bunch, though, is the cult leader. The fact that he can throw TNT and knock out any part of the floor around you became something of a terrible annoyance. That sort of breaking the game gets very tedious very quickly.
The soundtrack, the voice acting, the artwork and the fact that you can change up the film grain, all of this just screams that it was for the fans of the genre. It feels like Dick Tracy, all the way down to the fact that there is a lot of death and Tommy Guns. It gets to horror and scifi bits, but it stays in its film noir world through and through. It gets a little ridiculous in some parts, especially with a girl who is literally in pieces and can't put herself back together. The themes can get a little dark with the kidnapping that the implications of horrible things happening, but it never leans into the really terrible stuff.
The gameplay is enhanced by the feel of an adult cartoon that still plays like a wacky 1930's flick. There are times it plays itself very seriously but also has all kinds of cartoon logic that is very refreshing. This game feels like it was meant to be enjoyed by Doomsters and people who want a more openly fun game. The characters can be wacky but also have real world problems, the main character is serious, aside from when he pulls one-liners and old references. It's not jarring because it's consistent throughout the game. You become absorbed in this game and you want to know how all of this is connected. The story, the gameplay, the themes and the art style always remain at the forefront and mold together so well, it feels like you got more than your money's worth and that is something to be celebrated in this industry that is treating its own customers like the enemy. This is a small indie project and that is also a reason to supply it with more so that they can keep this up and make more games like it. Virtua Cheese.
