Having played Mouse and having gone back and looked at their earlier demos, it's very blatantly clear that their original vision was massively compromised somewhere along the way. I'm not talking about the story specifically even though it is cringy for all the obvious reasons - constant references (some of which aren't even clever or suitable in context), dialogue that drags on forever (most of which is thankfully skippable so the devs weren't complete morons), BMP being a blatant stand-in for the BNP and the main bad guy being so obviously based on Oswald Mosley (surprised they didn't make a Mosley/Mouse-ley pun considering they did that shit with almost everything else) and the shrews being a not-so-subtle stand-in for Jews (amusingly enough they picked an animal to represent them that has a very distinctive, long, slightly hooked nose in real life). That stuff is eye-roll-worthy enough but even the gameplay is shit.
1) All of the weapons are borderline worthless without upgrades. The Tommy Gun and the Devarnisher are basically the only weapons you'll need because the Micer is piss-weak and the Boomstick/Kiss Kiss are useless beyond point-black range. Loose Cannon has minimal splash damage and so you're just wasting ammo unless you score a direct hit. Jar-Head and the Portable Freezer are both obtained in the last few levels when the game is basically over. You also have an unlockable "space gun" that's literally weaker than the starting pistol.
2) Enemies are tanky for no real reason even when scoring headshots. And it's very unintuitive because some of the bigger enemies go down relatively quickly while the smaller ones can eat a dozen bursts of lead to the face before peacing out. And every fight is basically just funnelling the player from arena to arena, it reminded me a lot of the nu-Wolfenstein games, specifically The New Colossus. And that's not a good thing. And the black and white aesthetic makes it incredibly hard to see in some of the darker levels.
3) Weird design decisions like almost all of the power-ups except the hot chilli being limited to special story-specific encounters instead of being available normally like in every other regular FPS and the flashlight being context-sensitive for some bizarre reason. It's things like this that made me suspect that this game was heavily influenced by external meddling because this is the kind of retarded shit that no dev worth his salt would implement but an idiotic publishing executive would. Even the rubber-hose effect is more exaggerated than in earlier demos.
4) Levels cannot be replayed again after finishing them. And there is no post-level counter for secrets like in almost every other proper modern FPS so you won't even know that you missed something. And considering that the game loves locking doors behind the player so backtracking is impossible, it means that you're basically guaranteed to miss out on stuff to complete side missions or missing out on upgrade blueprints. The level design is also pretty shit hence why they had to introduce hand-holding mechanics.
5) Money is pointless, only useful thing you can spend it on is baseball cards to make winning card games easier except that the only reason you need to win card games is so you can unlock the utterly worthless "space gun" that I mentioned earlier. So there's literally no point to it. The only useful collectibles in the game are blueprints to upgrade your weapons. They also removed weapons like the sniper rifle and the Lewis gun which were in gameplay videos literal weeks before release - publisher meddling and developer greed, I'm guessing.
You know what this game reminded me of? Bioshock: Infinite. Has the same pitfalls. Except Bioshock: Infinite had color and nice aesthetics. This has neither.
For once IGN was right on the money. This shit doesn't warrant more than a 6/10.