A brutal third-person arcade co-op shooter where you take on an entire army of terrorists.

Story

A brave commando soldier volunteers for a very dangerous mission. The mission objectives are clear and simple; eliminate an army of terrorists, by any means necessary.
Armed with only an assault rifle and some hand grenades, the commando heads towards the terrorist headquarters and opens fire at anything that moves…

The Game

Cabal is a third-person shooter arcade game where you play as the lone commando trying to eliminate an entire army of terrorists along with their tanks, helicopters, submarines and more.
The Amiga home computer version of Cabal is a pretty faithful conversion of the arcade original. The same gameplay is mostly intact, the action is just as intense, as is the high difficulty level.
The game is played on a screen-by-screen basis where each stage is one screen. The goal of each stage is to kill all the enemies as indicated on a progress bar on top of the display.

Controls

In Cabal you steer the commando left and right with the joystick at the same time as you are aiming with your crosshair. Holding the fire button will force the commando to stand still while he is firing the rifle, and you are free to aim your machine-gun slavos. Because of the lack of a button dedicated to throwing hand grenades, the developers decided that hand grenades are thrown by holding the fire button and pushing down on the joystick. This means that you will be throwing many unintentional hand grenades as you are spraying bullets and aiming with the crosshair. This is a rather serious issue in this game, as it basically robs away the strategic use of grenades.

An even bigger issue is the fact that you can’t avoid bullets by dodging and rolling in this version. You can make the roll, but you will still be hit by enemy bullets and explosions unlike the arcade version. If there is some way to dodge bullets, then we haven’t been able to figure it out. This is a major headache and virtually renders the game impossible to play, let alone to beat it.

Content

When you start the game, you’re treated with a moody intro screen that shows massive squadrons of terrorist helicopters soaring across a doomsday-style burning red sky, spraying bullets all over the area. That’s about as deep as the story goes, and sometimes that’s all that’s needed.
The game features 20 stages and five bosses, and they are all insanely hard. Each stage has an infinite number of enemies that keeps swarming into the screen. Each time you kill an enemy entity, it’s counted towards the enemy progress bar. When the bar is maxed out, you are automatically taken to the next stage.
There is not much variation between the stages. They all feature destructible props and you’ll encounter some different types of enemies, but they all behave similarly.
You are given two lives to beat the whole game and once you take four hits, you lose one life. Extra lives can be earned through scoring 10.000 points. Considering that you are constantly peppered with bullets, grenades and bombs on each stage, the odds does not look good at all.

The environments you are fighting in are all very appropriate to the theme of the game. You will be fighting your way through villages, barricades, fortresses, jungles, airports etc. Your basic enemies are the terrorist infantry and they’ll use both gunfire, their massive numbers and grenades against you. Some special units are also fighting with the terrorists like grenadiers-troops. Every now and then you’ll find extra weapons like new hand grenades and a better machine gun. The machine gun fires bullets even more rapidly than your standard rifle and you get to keep it for as long as you live. So yes, you have infinite bullets, but hand grenades are harder to come by.

There is a high score table that will allow you to enter your initials when your game is over. It does not save, however, so it’s basically only a joy for the moment. You can compare scores with a friend in the co-op mode, or try to beat your own score, which is always fun in an arcade style game.

Cabal is insanely hard – we would even go as far as to say that it’s unfair. Many situations arise where it’s impossible to avoid enemy fire, and you are forced to take a hit. Every now and then an airstrike hits, covering large sections of the play area and the enemy fire is relentless. Each hit you take will grant you a momentary invincibility shield that will take you out of that danger. Little does it help though, because the next impossible wave of enemy fire comes just a few seconds later!
Each stage has a protective wall between you and the enemies. It consists of a few segments of a wall, and each segment is destroyed by a single gunshot – while it does take a bullet or two for you, it really isn’t the help you need in this game.

Since the game seems so impossible to play normally, we decided to try something that we normally don’t do: we tried the game with a slow motion hack. Playing in slow motion allowed us to consistently shoot enemy bullets out of the sky, and thus stay alive. This seems to suggest that it’s at least theoretically possible to manage in this game. We certainly do not possess the reflexes needed to do it in real-time, and it would be impressive to see someone who does.

Multiplayer

The game has support for two players in a simultaneous co-op mode. It should be said that the game becomes slightly easier with two players, simply because you will be able to clear the stages that much faster. You can also cover for each other, as it becomes easier to shoot enemy bullets and projectiles out of the air.

Graphics

Compared to the arcade original the Amiga version of Cabal could be described as garish. The color saturation is strong, which gives the look a more contrasted look. The animations are pretty standard stuff, but still manages to illustrate this gritty war pretty good. The stages are filled with destructible houses and other props and it’s strangely pleasing to see it all crumble to dust as the battle rages on.

Sound

The intro tune in Cabal really sets the mood of the game – it’s dark and gives you a preview of the insane and impending doom that awaits you in this mission. The music that plays during the game is very basic and consists only of a simple bassline. It provides a generic battle-tune that stays patiently in the background. The sound effects are great for this game as the explosions and gunfire keeps switching each other off in a chaotic symphony of video game war ambiance.

Summary

Cabal is a brutal game in every sense of the word. It delivers old-school Rambo type no-brainer action by the boat loads. Sadly, a few annoying gameplay issues and the unfair difficulty level makes this game pretty much unplayable in our opinion. The co-op mode adds some extra value to the game and can certainly be a fun challenge if you’re into these kind of games.

Developed By: Ocean
Published By: Ocean
Version Reviewed: Amiga 500
Genre: Third-Person Shooter
Players: 1-2 (local co-op)
Also Available On: Arcade, Amstrad CPC, C64, ZX Spectrum, DOS, NES
Released: 1989