A first-person, interactive puzzle game ported from MS-DOS, the story revolves around three space marines, one of which (the player) is a disembodied brain in a floating pod with video and limited interface. Fantastically immersive when I first played it in the 90s, the full motion video and great acting of the cast made it one of my favorites. The puzzles were hard to beat but the story that unfolds as they are solved made it well worth mastering them. Highly recommended!
For first-rate celebrity interaction on CD-ROM, nothing quite measures up to Tia Carrere (Wayne's World, True Lies) in the interactive sci-fi adventure game The Daedalus Encounter. Granted, as an actress Carrere is, well, let’s just say, still learning her craft. Yet, within the cozy confines of the computer screen, she comes across as less wooden, more personable than in her movie roles. The banter between herself and costar Christian Bocher even manages a fresh and impulsive quality, as if the two actually feel comfortable together. It’s not high theater, but it’s fun to watch.
How do you fit into this? Well, you’re this character named Casey (note the unisex name) who got blown to smithereens. Carrere and Bocher, aka war buddies Ariel and Zack, snagged your brain and stuffed it inside a robot. As a result, the interface is filled with controls wired into the fleshy lining of your robot innards; only the upper right corner of the screen is devoted to QuickTime movies that keep you apprised of the game’s progress. (If you have a fast enough machine — a 68040 or better, built-in video preferable — you can expand the QuickTime movie to fill the entire screen.)
The three CDs included with The Daedalus Encounter amount to a quantum leap in design, technology, and storytelling. The texture mapping and 3-D animation are nothing short of excellent. Great pains have been taken to integrate the computer renderings with the live action — that is, Carrere, Bocher, and the stuff they’re carrying. No other game — Brøderbund’s Myst and Synergy’s Gadget included — looks quite this good.
The plot is also unusually sound. Named after the Greek hero Daedalus, who successfully escaped a labyrinth but whose son, Icarus, perished after flying too close to the sun. The Daedalus Encounter is the story of y’our attempt to escape from a derelict, maze-like spaceship that’s drifting aimlessly and inexorably toward the nearest sun. In addition to trying to answer the obvious question — who gets to he Icarus? — you search for a means of rerouting the ship so you don’t all melt. At least, that’s what you do. Your buddies behave like two Lois Lanes, constantly getting themselves in trouble and expecting you to bail them out. Toward the end, they just give up and take turns ridiculing your attempts to save the day. I wonder if all superheroes end up feeling as resentful as I did.
The game’s programming could be tightened up. Except for the puzzles and the lengthy self-paced quest on disc three (possibly the most interesting part of the game), the action has a hurry-up-and-wait quality. After several minutes of watching a scene go by, you’re expected to jump in and fix things within ten seconds or die. As you might guess, you die a lot. Thanks to a strange save function, you must typically rewatch a minute or more of QuickTime movie before you reattempt a solution. And every time you die, you have to watch one of two movies of your ship burning — which I like to call Death and Extended Death — with no means of canceling. It’s enough to make the pure of heart curse like a sailor.
The Last Word
Despite these flaws, The Daedalus Encounter easily qualifies as the most exciting game I have seen this year. I’ve been told that some concerned parents find Zack’s language to be just a tad too authentic, so this game might not be for preteens. But with live-action celebrities, top-notch animation, three levels of difficulty, and multiple possible endings, it’s adult entertainment at its best.
McClellan, Deke. (September 1995). The Daedalus Encounter. Macworld. (pg. 73).
Mechadeus
Games
out of 10 (1 vote)
the-daedalus-encounter-disc1.iso
73 / 
2019-02-23 / 
cebf418983ab86796ca64fa79373f5294798e992 / 
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
