Here's a quick quiz for Greek mythology mavens: Who was Daedalus? Time's up. Daedalus created a pair of wax wings so he could fly away and escape the Minotaur. He passed on the secret of the wings to his son, Icarus, who was a real goofball. He flew too close to the sun, melted his wings and dropped like a Greek.
The Daedalus Encounter is not about meeting up with a fictional Greek character with wings. It is a science fiction "interactive movie" about a ship trapped in a decaying orbit too close to a star. Let's see, is there anything else worth mentioning here? Oh, yes. It stars Tia Carrere, well known for her scantily clad appearances in the Wayne's World movies, not to mention Rising Sun and True Lies.
Of less interest to everyone, it seems, is Tia's co-star, Christian Bocher, who has appeared on Melrose Place. This is not surprising, but it is kind of a shame, since Christian turns in every bit as good a performance as Tia.
Yes, we are talking about "performances" here, and they are actually pretty good. This product comes across as a quite competent buddy-style comedy/drama with really great special effects. Is it a great game? Well, no. Most of the time, you'll just sit and watch the video roll past, and every now and then you'll get to solve a puzzle. But the remarkable thing is, you won't mind. And that's not just because of Tia.
The story begins in the last months of an interplanetary war. One of the hottest flying teams around is Ari (Tia), Zack (Christian), and Casey (you). Unfortunately, a large chunk of debris from an exploded enemy ship hits your vessel. Ari and Zack manage to eject in time, but Casey suffers some major bodily damage. He ends up, as the ever tactful Zack describes, "a brain in a box."
After the war ends, Ari and Zack "liberate" you from your hospital to join them on a salvage mission. Not getting enough cash from their Veteran's pay, they are now scrounging the spaceship hulks left over from the battles to find valuable merchandise. It may seem like you wouldn't be much help to them without a body, but you'd be surprised. Ari and Zack have hooked you up to the spaceship's computer functions, and you can send probes out into space through which you can see and hear. These probes are also equipped with a laser and a grappling arm. So, you're hardly a vegetable.
The real trouble begins on one of these salvage missions, when the ship collides with a huge pincer-like alien ship in a decaying orbit into a nearby star. The only way out of this is to examine the ship, find the navigation equipment and get out of there. Ari and Zack can follow you in space suits as you explore the hulk.
Ari decides to call the ship the Daedalus, because it seems too cynical to call it the Icarus. On your explorations, you will have to face complicated graphic puzzles, bizarre alien artifacts and, worst of all, a flying alien species akin to the piranha. They aren't the original owners of the Daedalus, they're the ones who ATE the original owners. And, as mentioned before, the whole kit and caboodle is in the process of tumbling into a molten star. This is not gonna be easy. (Unless, of course, that's where you've set the difficulty switch.)
All of this storyline is presented in QuickTime Movies in a window that takes up the upper right quarter of the screen. Your controls take up the rest. This is a great looking game. The folks who put the scenes together really knew what they were doing in terms of compositing the live action and computer animation, not to mention old-fashioned timing and composition. The soundtrack is also quite exciting. The controls take a little getting used to, but that's what the tutorial sequence at the game's start is for.
On the whole, I am generally very suspicious of this sort of interactive movie. They usually seem to be very wasteful and expensive. For example, Daedalus Encounter comes on 3 CD's and costs roughly forty-five or fifty bucks. For this price, you only get a determined weekend full of play. That may not be the best entertainment value in town, but I have seen far worse examples than this. At least, when all is said and done, the weekend spent will be an enjoyable one. You may even be able to try some different strategies and get some replay value. This is not the best multi-disc adventure in the world, but it is a surprisingly good one. And, hey, it's got Tia.
