Cabal (NES) review "This game is a simple 3rd person shooter, where you take out loads of enemies at a time. That is the whole point of Cabal, mass killing. I LOVED this game, as it had the best 2-player out of any game on the entire original Nintendo Entertainment System. With all my modern systems I have today, I still play Cabal when my friend Paul comes over, because we have been doing this for at least five years now. It is like a tradition, cause it is a hilariously fun game, and there is no waiting between c..."

This game is a simple 3rd person shooter, where you take out loads of enemies at a time. That is the whole point of Cabal, mass killing. I LOVED this game, as it had the best 2-player out of any game on the entire original Nintendo Entertainment System. With all my modern systems I have today, I still play Cabal when my friend Paul comes over, because we have been doing this for at least five years now. It is like a tradition, cause it is a hilariously fun game, and there is no waiting between characters, cause it is simataneous play.

STORY (3/5): Original NES, so did it really need to have one. You are two guys that want to infiltrate and kill many people. There is no reason or purpose, but this is when gaming was true and you played for the game not the story.

GRAPHICS (9/15): The graphics were simple, and they looked it too. The buildings were all blocky, and when you shot them down a little cloud of smoke would appear as they toppled straight down then vanished. You only saw your characters back, and that was pretty detailed. Also you had a rediculous victory dance, which no sane man could not have loved. It was hysterical. All the enemies look the same, besides some differ in color of shirt depending on importance. The bosses actually also look strong as they are detailed and varied, like one is a sub, another a carrier truck, and of course the helicopter. The detail is in some places, but other places it is very weak. This could have been much better, but sadly it was not.

SOUND (6/10): The sound is basically listening to a barrage of bullets being shot back and forth or grenades being tossed. There is little music, and the music there is, is kinda annoying like the victory dance music. The lack of music is sad and disapointing, but the consecutive barrage of bullets does make up for the lack of sound, for it sounds like a war out there.

GAMEPLAY (52/55): Well, this is a 3rd person shooter except you don't move anywhere. You stay on one screen, and enemies keep appearing out of the sides. You have a target and you aim it at all area's of the screen, for enemies come from anywhere. This makes for complete chaos, as you shoot constantly from area to area. Luckily there is unlimited bullets or this would be insane. Now, there are also building around the defenders use to hide with, so it is best to shoot them down when you have the chance, as in when there aren't fifty people shooting at you.

Now offence is not all there is to Cabal, for defence plays an even more important role. You have walls of stones or whatever fits the screen you are currently on, and you use those to hide behind as you shoot at your enemies. However the enemies later on in the game will purposely go out of the way to shoot the walls, in hope to get them to fall down. However what if you no longer want to behind the walls, or you want to switch sides quickly. This is when the roll comes into play, which will get you from area to area extremely fast, and with a lesser risk of getting shot. However one shot will kill you, so keep that in mind, however you have a huge array of lives to spend, so basically your lives are like HP, cause you don't start over when you die.

Of course no good shooter does not have powerups and Cabal is loaded with them. By defeating enemies you can recieve machine guns and other various weapon upgrades. This also includes grenades, which are very important in killing off enemies and bosses. These powerups will take risks to reach as you will have to roll across flying bullets to reach them, but that is part of the fun.

Finally the game itself is fairly large. There are, I think, 5 worlds with 4 levels each. These levels you will need to kill a certain number of enemies to move on. Each level has a different screen, where enemies can use different objects as defence. At the end of the 4th level of each world, you will run into a boss level. You will try to shoot this boss down, even though he has massive HP. These are not easy battles, and you will probably lose a life or two but pass on. Each world differs in the major point of scenery, like some are desert other water levels, but it doesn't effect how the game plays. It just gives it another demension of play.

MULTIPLAYER (5/5): This is basically 2-player, as that was all that the original Nintendo could hold. However this was the best part of Cabal. You and a friend could jointly attack your enemies on the same screen. You could strategize to best succeed, and try to find a way to keep both of you still going in the last levels. This is much fun if both of you are of similiar skills, as it is extremely fun slowly taking out gangs of soldiers.

REPLAYABILITY (4/5): The single player replayability does not have as much to do as the multiplayer. You can play through this by yourself many times like I have, but there really is nothing to show of it. Simply this is a fun game to play, and you can play it again and again and still have a great time, but nothing about the game will change.

DIFFICULTY (5/5): This game, like all good games, starts off easy with a lot of things to hide behind, and enemies which are simple. However later on there will be underground subs attacking you and overflying planes which will take out your barriers fast, and that is when the true skills are needed. I love it, cause the beggining is fun as it is easy, but later on it becomes time to take things seriously.

OVERALL (84/100): This is my second favorite game period for the original Nintendo, but however I can see that there are many problems with this game. The graphics and sound could've been alot better, and the gameplay could have been improved upon a little bit. However this game is still worth the buy, for it is one of the best games made for the Nintendo, and it is still a great game today. It is a simple game to understand, and a hard game to master.

Community review by ratking (August 25, 2002) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.