Mouse: P.I. For Hire (Multi) Review

A weekend review shoots onto the scene with Mouse: P.I. For Hire. My investigation proved fruitful, offering word of a game that certainly surprised and delighted. Here's the SuperPhillip Central review. 

A Completionist's Noir-tmare

Saturday. 2:00 P.M. I parked my keister at my office chair and started rat-a-tat-tattin' at the keys like an hot Tommy Gun in hopes of finishin' my review. Like the Circuit de la Sarthe, this game I was coverin' had lots of twists, turns, and was just about as dangerous. This particular game had everything--mystery, intrigue, mice, and enough cheese to smile to one-thousand different photos. It was time to put my reviewin' skills to the test and start chattin' about Mouse: P.I. For Hire. 

...Okay, okay. I cannot keep up this Noir detective monologue bit for an entire review, so let's just get to it.

Immediately from the get-go, Mouse: P.I. For Hire delights, delivering a black and white cartoon-y art style reminiscent of Disney's Steamboat Mickey short. I was immensely amazed by just how fluid everything looked, shooting through guns blazing and seeing enemy heads pop, revealing a fountain of... let's say, ink. Yes, this is a gorgeous and well done game graphically, fully realized and nailing its cartoon aesthetic, and I'm pleased to say that it certainly holds up in the gameplay department as well.

While the enemy variety in Mouse: P.I. For Hire isn't the highest, offering a small mix of run-at-you melee
foes or faraway shooting types, it's still quite satisfying to blast them all down.

Mouse: P.I. For Hire is essentially a DOOM-like in that its levels are labyrinthine areas full of corridors, rooms, spaces, and myriad secrets while having you run, gun, and jump your way through them, mowing down or punching out everything in your P.I.'s path. 

You begin the game with nothing else but Jack's pistol, a Micer, and his fists. However, as the game and case go on, you'll acquire a shotgun, T.N.T. dynamite to chuck at foes and literally signposted walls, a riff off of a Tommy Gun called a James Gun, and more. The more inventive weapons are earned later in the game, such as the hot glue-shooting Devarnisher that melts the skin off your foes in real time, as well as a gun that fires a freezing ray to chill enemies into ice cubes, perfect for shattering. 

I'm rubber, and you're glue. Particularly hot glue. The kind that melts your skin off, bub!

Of course, that's not to mention all of the abilities that Jack learns throughout his case, such as the ability to twirl his tail to slow his descent in order to make it across large gaps or rise up air shafts, a double jump, the ability to wall run along specially marked walls, and more.  

All of these weapons and abilities do a great job in giving you a lot of options in firefights to experiment and take out baddies in a way that suits your play style. You'll certainly gets a multitude of opportunities to do so, as Mouse: P.I. For Hire really loves locking you in a large, expansive room and forcing you to clear the room out of enemies that pour in through doors with skulls on the top of them. 

Nothin' like the great outdoors to not feel so claustrophobic! 

Generally speaking, this is a common occurrence throughout the game's 10-20 hour campaign, and you get a sixth sense, sorta, of when these rooms will happen. It doesn't help that they happen so often that it can get a bit repetitive, even with all of the combat options available to you, whether that be running and gunning, jumping and shooting at exploding barrels to obliterate a squad of enemies at once, or even shooting a hanging prop like an anvil to crush an enemy as it stands below it.

By far the highlight for combat and being able to use multiple methods to dispatch baddies was that of the bosses in Mouse: P.I. For Hire. The game has a motley crew of foes to take on, and these aren't just "shoot 'em till their dead" type affairs. The best of these boss battle bunches include ones that feature attack patterns to avoid, evade, and dodge as you unleash a furious flurry of firepower and bullets their way. These are engaging and suffice to say, not as repetitive as the virtual "kill rooms" that litter the game's levels. 

The various boss battles served as quite the combat highlight for me.

When you're not brutalizing and murdering sinister foes in your path and in such kill rooms, you're on the search for clues. And in between finding these clues, there are all sorts of secrets to uncover in true DOOM-like, boomer shooter fashion. The secrets are well-hidden and many of them are quite easy to miss. Whether located in one of many vents that our gumshoe protagonist climbs through, inside locked doors and safes that must be "tailpicked" through an enjoyable enough mini-game, or simply sitting off the beaten path, these secret areas house money, newspapers, comic books, baseball cards, and other collectibles and goodies like schematics, used to upgrade your various guns and weapons. 

This, however, leads to my number one issue with Mouse: P.I. For Hire and one of my pet peeves in gaming--a game design sin, really. That's the extreme amount of missables within the game. By virtue of the structure of Mouse: P.I. For Hire, it's literally impossible to return to a completed level, which means that a lot of stuff that you missed collectible-wise is lost to you. Yes, you can purchase missed collectibles like newspapers, comics, and baseball cards from the hub city in the game--for a price, but key clues are permanently gone. 

Not exactly the warm welcome Jack Pepper was wanting here, but the welcome he was expecting all the same.

Even still, with the ability to purchase missed collectibles from the shop, there is still a finite amount of money throughout the game. Thus, if you wish to do a 100% run in one playthrough, a guide and multiple saves are a must to track everything down--from collectibles to side quests in the appropriate form of "side jobs". These, too, are easily missed and once they're gone, they're gone on your current playthrough. 

When a game is over 10 hours long for a playthrough, this gets quite frustrating quite fast, especially when the game possess multiple "points of no return" that are not clearly marked by it. Enter a door, and it can instantly lock behind you. Start a particular mission, and it can and will lock you out of returning to the hub city for the rest of the game. 

Usually each time a given level is completed, Jack returns to the city hub where his apartment and office are, enters inside, and pins various clues to his caseboard to hash out the all-encompassing, interconnected mystery that tells the story of the game. Additionally in this hub, Jack can peruse his usual stomping grounds, purchase ammunition, use schematics found in levels to upgrade his weapons and guns, enter the bar to chat with the locals, and even play a rather enjoyable card game using all the baseball cards found within levels.

Splat! My kind of 'toon!

As mentioned, Mouse: P.I. For Hire is a gorgeous game and its 1930/1940s esque cartoon art style is realized to its maximum potential. It really feels like you're playing a cartoon in a Noir style, complete with enough cheese puns to fill up a party platter. That latter part was especially enjoyed by me, as not only a lover of puns but as someone who appreciates a game committing to a bit. Between the fluid action, well done old-timey detective music--as well as some real world jazzy pieces like The Glenn Miller Orchestra's "In the Mood"--and the amazing voice acting--Troy Baker does a phenomenal job as Jack Pepper, Mouse: P.I. For Hire definitely delights.

And really, that's what the game does throughout its 10-20 hour runtime: it delights. Sure, a private investigator entering a police station and mowing down all of the dirty cops inside might bring some "ludonarrative dissonance" discussions into the fray if you think about it too hard, and the numerous points of no return means achievement (or is it "a-cheese-ment") hunters will balk at the requirements, but if you're just casually playing through the game, Mouse: P.I. For Hire is a ripper of a boomer shooter for sure. As a completionist, I hated having to use a guide to play through the game, as it really killed the pacing for me, but I can't argue against Jack Pepper's investigation being a thrilling and fun one. Case closed.

[SPC Says: B-] 

A code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book (NS2) Review

Our first review of this potentially busy month is Yoshi and the Mysterious Book for the Nintendo Switch 2, which also celebrated an anniversary on June 5th (though a one-year anniversary as opposed to our site's 18th anniversary). The game's a bit of a creature feature, but the best kind, at that! See why by reading on with the SPC review!

 Take a look, Yoshi's in a book: a discovery rainbow!

Yoshi's platforming debut in Yoshi's Island back in 1995 on the Super Nintendo is one that Nintendo's green dinosaur just can't escape the shadow of. Essentially, every platformer since is held to its high standard, and most of the time the comparisons aren't flattering. Now, my love and preference for Yoshi's Woolly World notwithstanding, it's safe to say that most other successors in the Yoshi franchise to Yoshi's Island have failed to live up to its rather esteemed reputation. 

Thus, it's interesting that Nintendo went in an entirely new direction with the Yoshi franchise. Yes, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is still a 2D platformer, but its structure and gameplay are quite different from the bog-standard, well-tread Yoshi's Island formula. Fortunately, for the Yoshi franchise, this is a direction that greatly succeeds at what it sets out to do!

Upon originally seeing the debut trailer for Yoshi and the Mysterious Book from Nintendo of America and all subsequent marketing, I was led to believe the game was going to be a charming, yes, but also an ultimately breezy adventure to play through, made more for younger audiences. While there's certainly some truth to that, overall, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book delivers enough challenges in its unique gameplay hooks that it kept me routinely coming back--enough so, that I happily 100%'d the game!

So, what IS Yoshi and the Mysterious Book if not yet another follow-up to Yoshi's Island? Well, it takes that game's foundations, but also expands greatly upon it to form something wholly original. The Yoshis stumble upon Mr. E (har-har), a talkative tome whose pages are incomplete. He requests that the Yoshis fill out and fill up his pages by entering inside and charting various creatures within. The Yoshis agree, and thus, the adventure begins. There's of course some story friction involved, such as Bowser Jr. and Kamek wandering through the pages, the former feverishly searching for a creature called the Bewilder Bird, but for the most part, the game is all about exploration and discovery.

Each "level" in Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is a contained experience focused on one new creature. Levels are usually not too expansive, but some can be, nor are they overly linear. Instead, they offer plenty of passages, rooms, areas, and for certain, secret areas to find. Immediately upon entering a level, the specific creature to be examined in its native habitat is there.

From there, it's all about examining the creature and using its abilities to further explore the level. The main "collectible"--for lack of a better term--is that of creature discoveries. Take the very first creature introduced in what amounts to the tutorial level, the Crazee Dayzee. Some discoveries are as simple as having Yoshi gobble up the flower with his tongue or bash it with an egg. Simple interactions that don't require much thinking to uncover. However, more complicated and involved discoveries are also available. These could be things like dunking a Dayzee in some water to make it sprout, using said creature to bloom an arch of flowers once it passes by it, or more interestingly, using differently colored Crazee Dayzees to create a remarkable rainbow of bloomed flowers of varying hues. 

Looks like a new discovery is in bloom! Well done, Yoshi!

Each discovery is worth a certain amount of stars, from one to three, with the more complex and complicated discoveries earning three. With 30-40 discoveries for a given creature's habitat, there's a lot of stars to go around. The stars are used to unlock further chapters, so in this sense, it's similar to Super Mario Odyssey's Power Moons in that casual, inexperienced, or younger players can still enjoy the majority of the game's content just by playing and finding the minimal amount of creature discoveries, whereas more skilled, veterans players can seek out as many discoveries per level as possible, fully completing and exhausting each creature's lineup of discoveries, and also collecting the trickily hidden Smiley Flowers, as well.

Some creatures live on land, some in the sky, and some in the sea such as this one.

What makes Yoshi and the Mysterious Book so fascinating and fun on a design level is how each creature Yoshi stumbles across has its own unique hook--its own gameplay mechanic--and so many of these could be fleshed out for their own game! You get such a steady amount of new, innovative, mostly intuitive ideas and concepts that get iterated on within the same level. From riding a giant boar that rushes and can dig through rock and sand, to using a spider creature's web to swing across the stage like Spider-Man, to bouncing off seeds like a gigantic bouncy playground to reach new heights, to retreating from a pursuing hand of grass while encouraging it to interact with the environment in different ways, there's just so much on offer--and that's just the tip of the iceberg, really. 

Ingenuity, imagination, and creativity are three things important to have for making discoveries in Yoshi and the Mysterious Book.

Heck, one level features a spore-like creature that literally can engulf an entire environment, spread on other creatures, and infest the whole level--which the latter is an actual discovery that Mr. E encourages Yoshi to attempt! That's one discovery of Yoshi's tasked by the book, yes, but it's also recommended by Mr. E to essentially exterminate an entire species from a totally different level, too! ...This book has some serious, unresolved problems!   

Yoshi can spread these spores all around the stage. ...Wasn't this the start of a certain Naughty Dog series?

So much of the joy found in Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is experimenting with the environment and its creatures in ways that go off the beaten path and tests the limits of your imagination. The most worthwhile and rewarding discoveries are the ones that make you think, "there's no way the developers or designers thought to include THIS or would make me do THAT" and lo and behold, you accomplish that task and boom! A new discovery gets written onto the page/level. 

A fun little touch is that each discovery you find through exploration, experimentation, and so forth gets written onto the background of the level at the exact place you discovered it. Sure, the background can get a bit crowded and claustrophobic when myriad discoveries are written on the page, but they never overlap to make for a visual mess, thankfully. 

Chart all of your discoveries for each access in Mr. E's readable pages.
You can also name/rename each creature you come across in Yoshi's adventures.

If you feel you've exhausted your imagination and creativity, and have zero idea on how to squeeze more discoveries out of a given creature's level, Mr. E has helpful hints. With the press of the L button, Mr. E will give some semblance of guidance. Some are less obvious than others, but for more obvious hints, you can spend tokens collected in levels to gets new discovery recommendations and further hints, too. Tokens are practically given away in levels, so you'll pretty never be having to grind for them to get hints when needed.    

This creature is of note, both figuratively and literally, for being quite musical.

Of course, levels aren't just built around minor creature discoveries. Each level or creature habitat has its own major goal or objective that opens up the "exit' to the level. You can of course continue charting discoveries long after the exit reveals itself, and you can easily start a level over or end your exploration directly from the pause menu. The former--the Start Over option--is important as a fair number of discoveries can be missed and you can get "locked out of" in a given expedition. Starting the level over puts most everything back where it was, with all your current discoveries, of course, logged in already.

Like the discoveries and the creatures within Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, the major goal of each level has a massive variety, all of them different depending on the creature and the level. For instance, the tutorial creature, the Crazee Dayzee, is all about blooming three giant buds at the end of the level by having Yoshi carry the creature to the buds to bloom them. Another, feature the Shy Guy, has you searching a settlement for elusive, hidden, hiding Shy Guys, and taking them back to the settlement's center. Whereas another creature requires you to win an aerial race to unlock the level's exit.

For example, the main objective of this stage is to fully grow this plant by routinely watering its head.

Some levels, generally the sixth and final one in each chapter, have a boss battle to take on. Now, Yoshi does not a health bar or anything like that in this game. He takes a licking and keeps on ticking when "damaged". The boss battles are not about surviving, but these also serve as opportunities to chart even more creature discoveries in how you go about the battle. As the Hauger, that previously mentioned giant boar, you can actually juggle the boss you battle against multiple times in the air, and in doing so, you unlock a discovery. Needless to say, this is easier said than done, which is a testament to some of the skill-based challenges that some discoveries demand of the player. Also, something that not a typical younger player would be able to do, either! 

Creatures come in all shapes and sizes within Mr. E's colorful pages.

Not every creature's habitat can be exhausted of discoveries in Yoshi's first visit. Some creatures have second "acts" to their specific levels, usually designed around interacting with a second creature. These second acts have far fewer discoveries to find, as they usually require Yoshi to hash out the means to clear the level's main goal and open the exit. Some of the later objectives can be immensely challenging. 

So many discoveries and especially stuff in the post-game, requires a level of play that not many in the inexperienced camp will be able to accomplish easily. Heck, even my gamer self of 35+ years struggled with so many of them. Part of this is because some creatures possess unwieldy, somewhat non-intuitive controls which leads to some frustration, but also another part is that some of the discoveries require such careful precision or specifically ordered steps that they can be challenging to achieve.  

Speaking of the post-game, it was curious to me that I rolled the credits after the sixth chapter was beaten. That's because there's still more story-related content in the following four chapters that unlock after. You're not really done with Yoshi and the Mysterious Book's story until you roll the second set of credits and unlock the literal post-game from there. It makes me wonder how many potential players will roll the first credits and assume they're done, despite so many loose ends with the story, unique creatures, and chapters are available afterwards. 

There are many familiar creatures from Yoshi's past games (like these Goonies),
 but more often than not, you'll discover many brand-new ones.

Switching gears to more a mechanical level, Yoshi himself controls pretty much better than ever in his latest game. He basically has all of the skills he's learned from his Yoshi's Island days: egg-throwing, flutter-jumping, ground-pounding, to assist in examining creatures and making discoveries, and he also has a tail whip that can send smaller to medium-sized creatures riding his saddle. This offers even more in the way of interacting with creatures, such as one that will blow out ride-able bubbles when saddled on Yoshi, or again, the Crazee Dayzee, which will bloom flower buds when the creature passes over them while riding on Yoshi.

Between completing each chapter by logging all creature discoveries and collecting all Smiley Flowers, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book took me just over 40 hours to fully beat. It was mostly an enjoyable time, too, save for some struggles with controlling creatures here and there, trying to make heads or tails of the in-game hints, attempting to successfully clear certain, challenging discoveries, and the incredibly occasional (like, once every five hours) frame-rate freezes and hits. 

Yoshi takes some time to stop and smell (and say hi to) a flowery friend.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is very much a thumping good read--or rather, play. It presents so many unique ideas within each of its 50-60 creatures that it approaches Super Mario Galaxy-levels of "new stage, new concept". Such a feat is no small task, and it's certainly no small comparison either. Yoshi's latest absolutely floored me with its exponential amount of fresh ideas, stellar level design, myriad methods the game's systems interact with each other (in almost a "how does this game not break?!" kind of way), and how it constantly rewarded me for thinking outside of the box. It's not Yoshi's Island, nor does the game even itself set out to be, which may disappoint some, but for those who give Yoshi and the Mysterious Book an honest chance, you'll immensely enthralled, much like reading an exceptional page-turner of an actual book. Good-Feel and Nintendo authored an amazing game here.

[SPC Says: A-]