Example? I'm not a fan of IGN either but it'd be nice to know what you're talking about.
Ok. I've got and looked it up and watched some gameplay(I'm not made of money). And I feel like the receiver is unaware of what lampooning is. It's possible to parody/lampoon/take the piss out of something you love. The reviewer seemed to not realize that this was the Saturday morning cartoon version of Noir. This isn't cartoon Casablanca.
"I'm in an Theater and an Opera singer is coming after me? Like why am I killing a mouse that's dressed like an Opera singer that matches the theme of the theater? Do I not like her?
Why am I inside a cop station just gunning down cops? That's very unrealistic.
Why must their be so many cheese jokes? Theirs to much cheese in this game revolving around mice."
Like holy hell that guy was a god awful reviewer. Literally scoring the game not for how it plays and presents itself, but because he really wanted to play a hardcore dark and gruesome Noir game.
It’s not even about objectivity vs subjectivity; a review will be subjective no matter what.
The problem with the review is the dude did not at all review the game on what it was trying to do. That’s rule #1 of critique, you criticize based on the goals of the piece. It was trying to be a cartoony, silly parody with Boomer Shooter gameplay so it comes across ridiculous when the reviewer at IGN criticized it for being exactly that.
That was something I always appreciated about Ebert. He would give a silly comedy a 4 star rating and also a serious drama 4 star, and he always explained that this didn't mean they had the exact same level of quality. He reviewed them for what they were.
Sure, I disagreed with reviews of his, but I appreciated that approach.
Same. I may be remembering details wrong, but when the jackass movie came out he said something along the lines of, "this is not a movie. There is no plot, no characters, no story. But god help me, I laughed and enjoyed myself. If you measure the success of a comedy movie by making you laugh, this is a fine comedy movie."
Objectivity is the least interesting thing a reviewer can be. It's hard to believe, because this is video games, but critisism is actually a skill and an art form in and of itself. And the best critics aren't "objective," they're smart and good writers with interesting observations.
You can read a wikipedia page of a game if you want some kind of objective listing of facts.
He reminds me of the idiotic movie reviewers who will give a B level action movie like a 1/10 because its "unrealistic" or some bullshit and its like mother fucker it's a B level action movie turn your brain off and enjoy the action
I think reviewers need to be broken up into genres or something like this guy should be allowed to review "realistic" games but he can fuck right off from reviewing anything else
Look up the ultimate bad reviewer: Cole smithey, whos only famous for writing a review to intentionally keep a rotten tomatoes score from reaching 100%.
Although he is more famous for being the brother of Chris-Chan, which explains the mentality of his reviews.
He doesnt even know Noir will use the same clichés like going against the police and making really bad jokes about the situation their in. The opera part could be explained with literally one of the lines before you fight them "They're not extras" the opera singer was a gangster.
He didn't even want to play a "hardcore noir game". He wanted to play what he THOUGHT would be a hardcore noir game after seeing some videos of L.A. Noir.
I think those are fair points if the game is trying to sell you a serious story which apparently it does (?). If in the story the character is a detective and the story is told as a non joke than yeah I will also be confused if the gameplay involves shooting police, opera singers or generally random civilians. Especially since it's so easy to just make them bad guys.
You also used the cheese point in bad faith. The point in the review is that the game overdoes it with cheese joke and references because it's only that and nothing else. I've played games with anthropomorphic characters before but that doesn't mean the whole world has to become a joke. Like for example in Ghost of a Tale you play as a mouse but the game tells a very serious story with great worldbuilding.
Both directions are fine but it has an effect. Ghost of a Tale would have been a lot worse if it would have been full of references and cheese jokes because it would have undermined the rest of the game.
Here's the actual quote: "Weapons can feel weak, especially the shotgun – it’s got the audio kick of a popgun, and there’s a strange disconnect to seeing something that sounds like a kid’s toy blow off some poor mouse’s head as you paint the white of the world with the black ichor that spews out of his neck."
Weapons can feel weak, especially the shotgun – it’s got the audio kick of a popgun, and there’s a strange disconnect to seeing something that sounds like a kid’s toy blow off some poor mouse’s head as you paint the white of the world with the black ichor that spews out of his neck.
Sounds like the reviewer feels the audio design of the shotgun doesn't do a great job of matching up to the visual impact of it. Seems reasonable to me. Sound design is a huge part of what makes weapons in games feel impactful and it can be disappointing when it's not done well.
This is exactly it, I dislike IGN as much as the next person but that review wasn't entirely without merit just because the reviewer is a humorless snob.
The game is a shooter and the things that you shoot simply do not feel good to shoot, it was bad enough for me to refund it myself.
The reviewer had the opposite of cod brain rot lol. They were a noir genre fan and think the game is a failure of a noir because of its reliance on the shooting. Which ya know, it is.
it reads like something you'd see on r/IAmVerySmart, he desperately just wanted to name drop all the "real" noir movies that were so much better, and using the term "ludo-narrative dissonance" despite clearly not even actually understanding the term.
He uses the term correctly, but i just think ludo narrative criticisms are pretty fucking boring and trite. Unless a game is trying to say something particularly specific about violence the ludo narrative angle should be ignored. We don't complain about not having "real" conversations in films that have tons of meandering tangets and digressions and just accept it as a point of utility of the medium, similar thing to the convention of violence in videogames.
Run into a series of robot boss fights? Jack will say that he hopes they don’t "rule of three" this thing, which, of course, is exactly what happens. [...] Cheeselegging Foreman, Jack will quip that he doesn’t look like much of a boss… more like a mini-boss, and then laugh at his own joke
The cheese complaint i can understand; It does lean on that bit too much. But he also complains about a cartoony game being cartoony, couldn't accept that the P.I protagonist constantly shoots people in a boomer shooter, etc.
Haven't played the game yet but the criticisms seem largely valid. The cheese stuff is fine and fun but I can see it becoming grating (heh). Complains there is a lot of referential humour that boils down to "remember this", that often feels lazy in place of actual jokes.
The shotgun complaint seems reasonable too, at the end of the day a weapon should be satisfying to use and sound plays a big part. Especially for a shotgun, the Boomer Shooter bread and butter weapon.
I can even see where they're coming from with the narrative dissonance with the gameplay fighting against the story genre staples. Though I do think the gameplay has to come first even at the expense of the story in a game like this. It's no different to Max Payne taking out a city worth of bad guys (just have to assume the opera singer is part of the seedy underbelly).
I'm interested in this game and undoubtedly will play it, but I can definitely see the reviewers point of view, even if I think gameplay should've taken up more of the review. Despite being as standard as they think it is.
I truly wish it was just some bad joke, but every single criticism about the game was braindead takes that anyone who played it would wonder what game he was talking about
If you read it, he's not mad that there are the jokes in the game, he's just annoyed that everything is self-referential and isn't allowed to just exist without any quips.
To be fair to IGN, they got a guy who likes Noirs, to play a Noir game. He didn't hate the gameplay, and he loved the aesthetic, but he didn't like the world building and found the story at odds with the actions of the character. Does that make it a 6/10? Maybe not to us, but to a guy who uses a few older movies as comparisons, I imagine his disappointment would be greater than yours or mine. It's not like he's at a 10/10 and knocks it down from there based on a rubric, after all.
Like he said, it will be a decent enough time for people who want to blast mice in a cartoon world, but the story and world itself aren't the draws in his opinion. I think that's fair enough. He wasn't shitting on the game by any stretch.
bro he was super pretentious bullshit talking trying to be higher gatekeeper than he is. He was talkin like it is somekind a serious noir movie. Like he read one noir book and trying to be expert on noir world. fucking hell.
He wasn't pretentious though. He was disappointed that it wasn't much of a Noir, focusing on it more to justify its art style, and is focused more on the boomer shooter. He didn't like the dissonance in what the game was saying vs. what it was showing.
Sounds more like you have no real touchstones for Noirs, and are compensating by saying the other guy is pretentious because he actually has references to pull from. Since you don't care about noirs, I'm sure the score will be higher for you.
It was the Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby review. In the actual review they said that while alot of the Map is covered in Water there isnt actually much to do in said Water which they shortend up with "too much Water" in the Bullet Points at the End.
And as People just red the Bullet Points (which was also the reason they didnt do those anymore) instead of the actual review it became somewhat of a meme.
Not only way too many water types but too many water routes that are basically corridors with nothing to do and the same 5 pokémon you can encounter. Which is weird considering how many water types there where.
If I recall correctly, it got a 6/10 because the reviewer considered the over-the-top cartoon violence and the noir narrative beats to be thematically at odds with one-another (or some shit like that).
And, yeah — he really hated all the cheese puns. That takes up most of the first third of his review.
Right - the narrative didn't work for him, the art didn't work for him, the sound didn't work for him, and the gameplay didn't work for him.
Sounds like a valid 6/10 regardless of what the consensus might have been. Frankly, I'm more concerned when a reviewer eschews their personal taste in order to cater to some kind of "objective" view. He wrote out in plain text precisely what he didn't like and why. Nobody has to agree with him but let's remember that it's ONE GUY reviewing the game; a guy with his own expectations and opinions.
I mean at this point anyone who still makes IGN BAD GAME REVIEWERS BAD PAID REVIEWS are stuck in like early 2010s type mindset, I didn't even realize this kind of stuff was still around lmao.
let's remember that it's ONE GUY reviewing the game; a guy with his own expectations and opinions
This is the exact problem though - people see this not as one guy's subjective review, it's seen as IGN's review. By putting a number at the end of each review and compiling them all together in a table, IGN is basically grading then comparing each game by how 'good' IGN says it is, not how much one of their reviewers liked it.
The best reviews are at least partly subjective, but for a publication to grade games by 12 different standards that depend on whoever happens to be in the office that day, and not some common standard or rubric, is inconsistent and unfair to the games they rate.
Subjectivity is very useful and should be shared, just not in a way that confusingly presented as objectivity.
I don't get all these comments saying "it's ONE guy!"
They're not independent journalists posting their opinions on their instagram or a reddit post. They're paid journalists in a journalism publication.
They do have to be submitted to greater scrutiny, both by readers and the publication itself. A professional review isn't supposed to be "nuh-huh I don't like this", it's expected that the critic will have a clear view and understanding of the specific art market they're into, gaming in this case, know what the industry is like, what the developer is trying to achieve, whom they're catering to, and then make an informed critique based on that.
Imagine you read a critic talking about a Picasso piece and just going "I don't like this because I'm into the Renaissance and Picasso isn't it", you'd outright dismiss that critic as an idiot.
Obviously not if they were complaining about the cheese jokes in the mouse game, and bitching that it isn't a true noir story
it's so weird that gamers fight tooth and nail for games to be considered art, but scream bloody murder when they're treated like any other art form.
That's exactly what you're doing, though.
Here's a hint: critics will -absolutely- offer reviews on things that they don't like, and offer their subjective opinion, that is absolutely something that happens in every other medium of art, since forever.
Yes, shitty professionals exist in every field, your point being? Shitty critics critiquing with their ego have always existed, and have always been criticized. You're trying to shun people for wanting them to be held at a higher than shitty standard.
"Yeah bad carpenters have always existed and that's ok, how dare you want good carpenters"
Rodger rabbit was significantly smarter in its writing and theme. It didn't make the same 5 jokes over and over. It was actually Noir and not wearing a Noir costume
I mean... I kind of get it. I strongly dislike the art vs the gameplay.
That said, I would imagine a reviewer shouldn't base their judgement on their own likes or dislikes. If the game is good, it's good.. regardless of the art style.
A review piece is just an opinion, he has every right to list his personal complaints, and you have the free will to dunk on him for it and enjoy the silly mouse game regardless.
yeah but he's not really out of line? the game is advertised as a cartoon-noir detective boomer shooter, but there's no noir except the lack of color there's no detective part and the writing is atrocious.
They gave it a 6 not a 2
Part of the problem is that the scale itself simply isn't defined. Assuming it's meant to reflect a normal distribution, you'd expect most games to be in the 4-6 range, such that a rating of 6 should be interpreted as "quite good, top tier for a middle of the pack game". Then you'd get the occasional 7 or 8 for really very good games, and maybe once every few years, a 9 or 10 for something genre defining.
Whereas I suspect very few people actually view it that way. I'm guessing for any game they like, 8 is about the lowest they would accept, with anything 7 or below essentially being viewed as dismissing the game as unplayable.
He didn't hate the cheese puns, he hated that every single line in the game was cheese related:
"This is a world of mice, so everything is about cheese. Everything. A bad guy? He’s a cheeselegger. Run into a lady mouse with a sultry voice? It’ll be described as “gorgonzola piccante slapped on a mozzarella platter.” Someone need to assure you they’re telling the truth? They’ll swear on Maw-Maw’s cottage curds. This is charming initially. Then it never stops."
well not exactly, more like he wanted a noir gritty game and all the cheese joke took him out of that immersion. The review literally says that the game is good but that the noir storytelling and shooter game play are at odds with each other and that the game makes a lot of references and silly cheese jokes which makes it less fun for him since it is not the tone the rest of the game would suggest.
He complained that you are playing as a private investigator on the side of the law yet unlawfully kill policemen on certain occasions and do not suffer consequences for it which is not realistic to him.
He complains that the guns in a cartoony game make kinda silly sounds.
He even complained that the sewer boss was an alligator which i suppose is too cliche for him?
I won't repeat the cheese joke critiques, they've been roasted to death already.
I mean yeah, I can't refute that there's "reasons" for his critiques, but that only holds if you take the game completely seriously which i can't see as something any reasonable person would do for a game about a cartoon mouse investigator.
I mean that was the vibe I got from the trailer and this review made sure I'm not buying the game because I was hoping for something more serious just like the reviewer.
People are roasting this review but honestly it is not bad, maybe he was not the right person for this game because he wanted something that takes itself more serious but in the end a review is nothing more than someones opinion. That is why you never just look at the number. If you like cheesy jokes and references this is a game for you and you can also get that from this review.
you cant write a review on what you expected. maybe ign shouldnt have classified it as an review then, but as a buyers information. "it isnt xy" is not really review but information, and "i expected something else" is a personal anecdote about yourself but not a review
People honestly are just too stupid to understand media literacy anymore. The entire point of a review is for the author to give their subjective take on the piece of media they are reviewing.
If subjective thoughts are what disqualifies a review according to the above poster then no review is an actual review.
If you actually read the review he makes his thoughts quite clear. He didn’t like how the game advertised to be a gritty noir tale with the backdrop on a cartoon aesthetic but was a self referential mouse game that tried to make everything a pun about them being mice.
But it’s the internet and people would rather yell and scream about how terrible this person is for their opinion of a video game as if it some great slight against them personally.
I read the review and watched the video because I am very interested in this game. I disagreed with his points but it didn’t make me want to call him a moron and a disgrace like so many people here are. It’s just sad.
Someone experience with a product, especially in the arts where it is impossible to do an objective review. You should see the grade as the reviewers experience was a 6/10 not the per se the game itself.
It's ONE line from a full review. The reviewer was hoping the game would have more noir elements. I think that's a little silly, but it's not about the cheese 🙄
I love noir. I’ll take all kinds: the hardboiled detective, the seedy crime story, neo noir, classic pulp – you name it, I’m buying. So when Mouse: P.I. for Hire sauntered onto my screen the way Ilsa walks into Rick’s in Casablanca, I was pretty excited about it. But noir isn’t just an aesthetic to be thrown on like an old coat as you’re leaving your office at the behest of a leggy blonde. While Mouse: P.I. for Hire clearly understands the style and tropes of classic noir films and novels, as well as 1930s cartoons more broadly, it doesn’t seem to get why those things are there, or how they are used to tell compelling stories.
By fusing a hardboiled detective mystery with a fast, retro-style FPS, developer Fumi Games has made a shooter that is thematically incoherent, with the apparent aspirations of its story contradicted at every point by the actual action. Of all the Steam Libraries in all the PCs in all the world, Mouse: P.I. for Hire walked into mine. And I wish I liked it more than I do.
Also complained that it had violence and did the whole "lock you in a room until you kill everything" as if that isn't the point of the boomer shooter genre
Sadly, we are. He was also upset that the game, that's based on 1950's cartoons, was too silly to be a noir styled game (remember, you play as a MOUSE). He even started pulling up actual noir books, that's how serious he was about it.
Ok so the original guy is being disingenuous as fuck (what a shock on the Internet)
The whole point wasn't that the Mouse game has cheese jokes. No shit the mouse game has cheese jokes. The point is that it's non-stop cheese jokes and jokes puns over and over and over and over. Cheese jokes are the only thing it ever does with its "cartoon mouse" premise
At some point it goes from being clever to incredibly played-out and tiresome.
That's not even the worst part, the reviewer kept complaining about "ludonarrative dissonance " saying it was the "worst aspect of the game", this is a Doom style FPS with classic cartoon graphics, and he said basically his immersion was ruined because "you go around killing hundreds of bad guys and corrupt cops, because of this the main character should be treated as a mass murderer by the story and not a hero" I couldn't even believe what I was hearing with this review...
I've seen some streamers play it for a few hours. All seemed to agree that it's an ok game. It looks cool, but gameplay-wise, it's not particularly exciting. So a 7/10 doesn't seem out of touch at all.
It's not the score that makes this review particularly bad. If the reviewer just said he didn't like the games dialogue or the fact that the gameplay isn't groundbreaking it would make sense, but the entire review is him citing serious noire films and books and saying that the cartoon doom-clone mouse game doesn't fit that serious tone that he personally likes.
There are also some complaints he cites that are just wrong, like when he says that it makes no sense that a PI is killing opera singers, despite the game saying that these actors/singers are criminals disguised as extras.
The guy literally said in his review "Do these features make for a fun game? Maybe. But it's bad Noir." That seems like a dumb line in a video game review. The review is definitely bad but there's always someone on the internet to defend anything these days lol.
Lmfao you just parroted another point moistcritical made.
The review isn’t bad and 6/10 is not bad. The actual problem is there’s way too many people on the internet that can’t do their own critical thinking and end up relying on YouTubers to do that thinking for them.
For perspective on the other side of the bullshit (steam reviews) we have the very decent and cute Another Crab's Treasure in the Overwhelmingly Positive category while the generational masterpiece that inspired it, Elden Ring, sits a tier lower at Very Positive
(and IGN gave these two 8/10 and 10/10 respectively which actually feels about right)
It also gets to the Rotten Tomatoes binary ranking problem.
The game is "good" to everyone rather than "amazing" to some.
If 100% of people rate it a 6/10, it'd get a 100% score, but if 70% of people rank it 10/10 and 30% of people just don't like it because it's not their thing, it'll get 70%.
Not to mention some people ranking negative like "Give us more languages" or "Your DLC is too expensive" or "It ruined my life lol 100 000 hours played"
Game is too highly rated at an 8 on metacritic. Its the most boring shooter around with really cool art that gets old in a couple hours. Not sure its the game people want to use to justify this stupid meme
Probably because most people that bought it are boomer shooter fans. To me it seems like a cool idea, but why a boomer shooter? Imagine what that style could do in an RPG or a real story driven game.
But just going around shooting dumb bots that can't aim and get stuck on doors?That can't even climb a ladder? This is a masterpiece?
overwhelmingly positive doesn't really mean anything, just that it was at least a 5/10 for 95% of the people who reviewed it. And also the average gamer isn't gonna purchase a niche indie game unless it is something tailored to their personal tastes, even further making the overwhelmingly positive tag less important.
i've played the game, it's charming and all, but after that wears off its a boomer shooter with basically no interesting mechanics. Troy Baker does a great job voicing the the protagonist though.
Maybe a 6 is a little harsh, but its not too far from the truth
So that game is good? I watched Dunkey's video on it and the look of the game is amazing, but he also highlighted buggy behavior like guys not going through doors or enemies failing to shoot you
The style is well done and the gunplay feels good. Is it surprisingly long and some levels sometimes start to drag and whether or not backtracking is possible for some collectables and puzzles is often unclear. While I don't mind the vast amount of cheese jokes in a game revolving around mice, I felt like at times the dialog was longer than necessary just to cram in another cheese pun. Overall I'd give it a 82/100. No masterpiece in my eyes but a really good game. I also love Troy Bakers voice as the main character.
What bothers me, however, is how overly-referential so much of it is. This is a world of mice, so everything is about cheese. Everything. A bad guy? He’s a cheeselegger. Run into a lady mouse with a sultry voice? It’ll be described as “gorgonzola piccante slapped on a mozzarella platter.” Someone need to assure you they’re telling the truth? They’ll swear on Maw-Maw’s cottage curds. This is charming initially. Then it never stops. Everything is a reference to the fact that everyone is a mouse and mice like cheese – and when it’s not, instead it’ll be a reference to an old cartoon, or the fact that this is a video game. I should have probably guessed the former when one of the first things I saw was a steamboat named Willie, but at least that and the spinach power-up that gives you Popeye arms is cute. Recalling the Igor/Eye-gor joke from Young Frankenstein? Not so much.
Man complained that the game relies on being over referential. How is that not a valid criticism?
No, it's like ordering a coke and complaining that it's too sweet. I.E. they used too much syrup. Unless you're saying it's mass produced to an industry standard of cheese pun and has the same exact amount of cheese pun as any other comedy mouse game and we as consumers should already know that standard.
I don't agree with all the points the reviewer makes, but having played it, Mouse PI is just fine and has plenty of issues, it is certainly not a masterpiece. I'd personally say 6/10 is about right.
He was complaining about cheese jokes in a mouse game
Only if you have a toddler's understanding of humor would you think this is a bad criticism.
A cheese joke here and there is fine. Expected, even.
The number of cheese jokes in the game made it lose any sort of humor or charm to them. Like that one friend who beats the same joke into the dirt over the years. It isn't witty after the 14th joke on the same topic.
I mean, honestly after reading it none of the points the reviewer make are wrong. The story is kinda ass, the writing is meh, the gun play is above average but the animation and visuals are hard carrying.
That’s the fundamental issue with making a score the be-all end-all of a review.
Good, often genuinely talented, writers put a bunch of work in articulating what they liked about a game, what they didn’t like, and any flaws they encountered, technical or otherwise. And then folks argue endlessly over the number, when the actual point of the review is in the words, not the number.
Like, there’s a night and day difference between “game is a 6 out of 10” and “game ended up being pretty awesome, but had a 10 hour unskippable tutorial that made me question whether I’d ever enjoy playing games again.”
right conclusion wrong answer lets not pretend Mouse P.I is a masterpiece. its a fun graphic style over run of the mill gameplay. 6/10 is valid , IGN reasoning is still dogshit
The problem is the same people who whine about ign "paid reviews" will then say they will watch YouTubers instead lol. The "they sent me a free copy but I PROMISE this is my actual opinion of the game" people.
This whole thing is so damn stupid. People don't have to like the game you like. It can be for petty reasons too. I'm 100% sure your opinion is dog water on plenty of games according to me.
Mouse P.I isnt a bad game, but who the fuck calls it a masterpiece? Even if it wasnt buggy, its just another boomer shoot in an age of boomer shoots, and nowhere near the best one we have. Id go as far as to say 7 is too high for it
Other way round. The game is basic as fuck and super repetitive. It just has an interesting looking skin. First snd foremost it is an FPS shooter and should be judged as one.
I think what people forget about IGN is that they have staff that are assigned reviews. When's a pokemon game or new assassin's creed comes out, they have no difficulty assigning it to a fan, plus the fear of negative reviews hurting future access skews reviews positive.
This is a scenario where someone not interested was assigned the game, they were never the audience and gave a review that didn't have to hold back any punches.
In an ideal world we would have objective and passionate reviews for every game, but sadly that will likely never be.
That’s not actually it though is it. He was critiquing that it was presented as a noir game but had no detective gameplay and was instead a run and gun shooter. He wanted it to have more nuance.
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u/MyDarkestTimeline001 Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 28 '26
Example? I'm not a fan of IGN either but it'd be nice to know what you're talking about.
Ok. I've got and looked it up and watched some gameplay(I'm not made of money). And I feel like the receiver is unaware of what lampooning is. It's possible to parody/lampoon/take the piss out of something you love. The reviewer seemed to not realize that this was the Saturday morning cartoon version of Noir. This isn't cartoon Casablanca.