Cabal

The Good
Cabal is a 1-2 player shooter in which you control a soldier and you must wipe out enemies with your pistol, and these enemies, such as soldiers, tanks, jeeps, and helicopters, will shoot at you or throw grenades at you. If you shoot enough, you advance to the next difficult level. After four levels, you must defeat a boss before going on to the next set.

One thing that I admire is the way that after killing several enemies at once, the "enemy meter" at the top of the screen starts to fill up with red bars. If these bars occupy the meter, then you proceed to the next level. The meter fills up quickly if you successfully dodge shots and grenades. Even better at filling up the meter with red bars is when you manage to get yourself a machine gun and shoot all over the place, since you will fill your meter up quickly.

Every round in the game (there are four) has you fighting through enemy bases, camps, and forests, as well as out in the open. Cabal is another one of those games that let you modify the background. There are several structures in each level, and these structures can be shot at so that you can get grenades, machine guns, extra points, etc.

The enemy AI is pretty good, with some enemies finding different ways to hurt you. For example, while the green men just appear on the screen, shoot at you, then go off-screen, the brown ones will roll to a different place if they are hit. Some of them even waste several seconds trying to throw a grenade, during which time they should be shot at before they have that chance.

Although the graphics are okay for its time, they are considered poor by today's standard. However, the graphics were much better than its Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum counterparts. All the characters are drawn and colored in exactly as they appear, and do not appear blocky like the other versions. Furthermore, the backgrounds and its structures are rich, and the status bar is well organized.

The sounds are excellent, especially the music. The music that plays when you fight the boss is much better than the music that you hear when you do not fight them. I have to say that the last boss music is much better than any other music, but I had to pause the game to enjoy it more fully.

The Bad
The Amiga version only has four rounds when the coin-op version, as well as the NES version, actually had five.

The Bottom Line
Except the number of rounds, Cabal is faithful to the coin-op version. If you like this game, you should try playing Blood Bros., which is much better because of its cartoony graphics, awesome sounds, and extended gameplay.

Rating: ***½