Daedalus Encounter

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a game by Virgin, and Mechadeus
Genre: Action
Platforms: PC (1995), 3DO
Editor Rating: 7.2/10, based on 6 reviews
User Rating: 7.3/10 - 3 votes
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See also: Puzzle Games

People say:

6.5

Daedalus Encounter is an okay game. The game is mostly comprised of clear video, with hardly any interaction. Instead of action, there are puzzles. The story gets pretty cool, and Tia is easy on the eyes. I just wish there was more interaction with the game. Daedalus Encounter is better if you have two people working at it Think of the control In a similar way to pressing PLAY on a VCR. If you want to watch a cool story unfold and love video, this is one of the better games.

6.5

I have never been a big fan of any FMV games. But if I had to pick out a couple of the top-notch ones. Daedalus Encounter would be at the top of my list. One of the major problems that has plagued this type of game is not enough interaction between the player and the game. DE does a good ob of offering the player a little bit of everything without coming across like a movie. Both the audio and video are well above average for the 3DO.

7.0

This great title, originally made for PC, is one of the few FMV games I actually got into. The video and audio quality is surprisingly good for a 300 title and the actors can actually act (unlike numerous other cheesy FMV games) The puzzles encountered throughout the game make you think, but aren't too difficult. The major downfall of the game are the cinemas between Interactions; it seems like you are actually watching a game instead of playing one.

7.0

Daedalus Encounter is the hottest FMV game available today. The outstanding graphics and sound incorporated into the four CDs make up the bulk of the movie-like cinemas. The game relies on riddle solving to direct you through the one-path story in a pass-or-fail manner. The controls are imaginative and easy to use, making the game enjoyable even though you end up watching it play more than you interact with it. A great game if you like FMV titles.

Download Daedalus Encounter

PC

System requirements:

  • PC compatible
  • Operating systems: Windows 10/Windows 8/Windows 7/2000/Vista/WinXP
3DO

System requirements:

  • PC compatible
  • Operating systems: Windows 10/Windows 8/Windows 7/2000/Vista/WinXP

Game Reviews

Fast forward to the future - to the 22nd century, where your job is to salvage spaceships throughout the galaxy. Your trio of salvage vessels encounters a very large, very strange organism and discovers it's actually a living spaceship. Your task in the game is to maneuver the thing safely through space. Using full-motion video with live actors, the game play includes multiple plot twists, mazes, strategic puzzles, and varying game endings. The game play is designed to shift with the player's attitude (peaceful or hostile).

A port of a popular PC game. Daedalus Encounter takes you on a dazzling outer-space voyage fraught with puzzles, gorgeous graphics, more puzzles, a fascinating story line, and even more puzzles.

Space Blast

As Daedalus begins, you're confined to a life-support box and set out with Ari and Zack (played by Tia Carrere and Christian Bocher in strong performances) to scavenge from space wreckage. When a collision strands you on a seemingly deserted alien ship, exploring the mysterious craft is the only way out. You accompany your pals by means of a tiny, floating probe with handy features like a sensory array, laser, and so on.

Armed with more than two hours of live-action video, Daedalus's stunning graphics are as compelling as a big-budget Hollywood flick. The footage of the actors flows smoothly with only a touch of graininess, and the phenomenal sci-fi scenery will take your breath away.

The superb sounds effects, such as the liquidy slosh as the alien doors open, build an impression of otherworldliness that immerses you in the story line. Intense, dramatic music firmly sets the mood for each scene.

Wax Wings

Cameplay's in short supply, though. You progress by completing puzzles and tasks, such as aligning colored tiles or gunning down a swarm of aliens. Each obstacle is followed by an engrossing cinematic sequence that carries you deeper into the plot, but you rarely interact with anything until the next puzzle.

At first, the story's absorbing enough that all that time just holding your controller doesn't matter, but the intensity fades too quickly. If you aren't a diehard puzzle fan, the alien landscapes start to look the same, and the plot focuses too much on exploring and too little on exciting developments.

The controls create further irritations. The targeting is frustratingly inaccurate in the shooting sequences, and mastering the complex probe demands too much study.

Fun Encounter

Despite its flaws, Daedalus supplies enough intrigue to engross even action gamers at first. How long you last depends on how interested you are in puzzles with a sci-fi twist. Daedalus is definitely worth a look.

ProTips:

  • Solve this puzzle by adjusting the symbols on the perimeter so that every groove in the center symbol is filled with green light.
  • When gunning for the Krinn, make sure you don't shoot one of your friends!
  • Many of the locks, puzzles, and other secrets on the alien ship are activated by light. Try every color on the multi light transmitter when stumped.

This interactive sci-fi adventure is a perfect port for the 3DO. Originally a hit PC title, the game's centerpiece is two hours of live-action video starring Tia Carrere and Christian Boucher as your ship's crew.

In this one-player game, your small scavenger ship is caught in the wreckage of another vessel, and the tangled mass is about to crash into an alien sun in the middle of an embattled galaxy. As you've guessed, you're the only one who can save the craft and her crew from a gaseous grave.

You play the game as Casey, a biomechanical probe. Working with the crew, you solve progressively more difficult puzzles, survive action sequences, and explore the ship as you look for a solution to the problem. Daedalus Encounter flies at three levels of difficulty.

Movie-quality production, including an original score, really ups the ante. Advanced computer graphics flesh out the action and interface well with the live-action sequences. With its cast of stars, Daedalus Encounter is one of the high-est-profile projects coming for the 3DO this fall.

Having played through the slow, buggy, and annoying-as-hell PC version of The Daedalus Encounter a few months ago, I wasn't exactly expecting the 3DO version to butter my muffin, if you know what I mean. But I'm pleased to report that Panasonic has done one hell of a conversion job on this sci-fi extravaganza starring Polynesian sex kitten Tia (Wayne's World) Carrere and all-American stud boy Christian (Who?) Bocher. If you never saw the PC version, think of The Daedalus Encounter as The 7th Guest in space, with plenty of point-and-click puzzles and a couple of arcade-style shooting sequences to get your adrenaline pumping.

So what makes the 3DO version so much better than the PC version? The video, for starters. On the PC, the interface took up most of the screen, with jerky full-motion video in a quarter-screen-sized window. On the 3DO, the entire screen is filled with crisp, clean, smooth FMV-sounds like I'm talking about beer-and the interface only appears when you call it up. The 3DO version also has a better save-game system and additional scenes that were removed from the PC. (This version spans four CDs, the PC version "only" three.) The verdict: An excellent puzzle game with FMV that's fun to watch.

Here Are A Few Sad people who might go out and buy this title just because it's got Tia Carrere (the "babe interest" from Wayne's World) in a very tight-fitting, low-cut. black leather thing. To be honest, from the marketing gumpf we've seen so far, I'd say that Virgin seems to be relying on this tactic quite heavily. All the promotional pictures have the (admittedly extremely attractive) heroine of the game, slinking around holding a big gun and looking dead cute... but there has to be more to it than this, surely?

The programming team behind the game is Mechadeus, which you may have come across before. Although relatively new to the pc gaming market, the team's first game. Critical Path, received rather a lot of media attention. Admittedly, the attention wasn't particularly positive because the gameplay was basically pretty crap, but it was very different for its time - mixing 3D Studio rendered back-drops with Quick-time movie sequences, which were super-imposed over the top.

Now, whilst Daedalus Encounter is by no means a sequel to Critical Itoth, it does share a lot with it when it comes to graphical style and content.

Something new?

The basic idea here is that this is an "interactive movie" (arrrrggghhhhh!!!), which is interspersed with action and puzzle sequences. Imagine if you will a concoction produced from combined juices of 7th Guest, Journeyman Project and Creature Shock, involving single-screen, spatial-reasoning puzzles, a bit like those in 7th Guest, and extremely simple, first-person perspective shooting scenes.

You play the role of Casey, a 22nd century commando type who has been so severely mutilated during the wars that his body has been discarded and his consciousness transferred into a highly advanced floating probe thing which seems to act a bit like a miniature R2 D2 with no legs, er. if you see my meaning. Accompanying you are two pals - Ari (who is played by Tia Carrere) and Zack (some bloke called Christian Bocher who is apparently a bit famous, but not very) with the three of you having landed jobs as a space-ship salvage crew. However, just as things seem to be going well, you come across a weird organic spacecraft, which accidentally collides with your own ship and destroys it. Fine, fair enough... any good salvage crew can commandeer a new ship. Unfortunately, though, the organic-craft is so incredibly alien that you and your chums just can't work out how to fly it... and only happens to be on a collision course with a nearby star. Now, as you can imagine, this is cause for a suitably large degree of concern and is. predictably, where you take over the adventure.

When we saw Daedalus Encounter for preview it was at an extremely early stage of development. However, the Quicktime video footage is of a very high quality, even now, running in near full-screen in vga an in a window about a third of the size of th screen in svga.

Hopefully we'll be able to bring you a review of the game very soon, along with an exclusive interview with Tia Carrere...

Snapshots and Media

PC Screenshots

3DO Screenshots

See Also

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