Weird is essentially the sequel to Ghosts, a game I previously reviewed. Both had most of the same dev teams and both are first person interactive museum games about the paranormal. Weird is more of a general overview covering a bunch of topics all over the world though; it covers not only ghosts like the Winchester Mansion, but cryptids like Bigfoot and Nessie, strange phenomenon such as spontaneous human combustion and ESP, and UFOs and aliens as well.

This time instead of a British haunted house hosted by Christopher Lee, Weird has us explore a top secret underground facility where the “exhibits” are on display to interact with, it feels like you if crossed Myst with Control. Weird doesn’t have a big name narrator this time around; instead it’s this British lady who doesn’t do nearly as good of a job as Lee, but her stilted, almost robotic, sounding delivery does lend itself to the game’s atmosphere. Weird has a more abstract and mysterious vibe to it than Ghosts, it feels more like you’re diving into the unknown as you explore the depths of the facility. Unlike Ghosts, Weird actually adds puzzles you need to do in order to progress deeper into parts of the facility. Unfortunately these are just some of the most uninspired adventure game puzzles that clearly exist just the pad the game out and waste your time, like a rotating pipe puzzle, a game of Simon, and a maze puzzle with traps that force you back to start. They’re not a serious detriment but they add nothing to the game and it’s why I knocked half a star off compared to Ghosts.

Like with Ghosts I just consider the subject matter all goofy fun because I don’t buy any of it, though similar to Ghosts the game just rather uncritically covers the material. And whoo boy does this go into Cranksville harder and more unironically than Ghosts ever did. One of my favorite moments of comedic whiplash is this video of this one ZZ Top looking guy who starts off the clip by saying, of course Nessie isn’t a relict plesiosaur; Loch Ness is clearly too small to support a viable population that would last millions of years into the present. No, you see, Nessie is actually a demon summoned by Aleister Crowley in a botched ritual. I also love how they used a Weekly World News cover without any irony I’m pretty sure. It’s odd though because at times it does outright just says some of this ain’t real like how on the topic of a lake monster in Sweden they have a clip of a cryptozoologist who just straight up says that people are most likely just getting spooked by seeing moose swimming around in the lake because moose are huge and a lot of people are unfamiliar with the fact that moose are skilled swimmers. (Fun fact: One of the few natural predators of the moose is the killer whale) They also bring up the late James “The Amazing” Randi, a professional stage magician and cool dude who dedicated his life to debunking pseudo-scientific fraudsters like psychics, and describe how he exposed Uri Gellar’s ESP quackery, but they do so in an almost grudging tone.

Weird, like its predecessor, is a relic of 90’s multimedia cheese and I had fun going through it. If you want a piece of the goofy ass 90’s X-Files era you won’t be disappointed.