Cabal (Arcade)

17th August 2018, is the 73th anniversary of my beloved country, Indonesia. Thus it's time for special article with militaristic-theme game to value our hero's fight. Last year is SNK's P.O.W, today is TAD's Cabal (1988).  

 

The skull is laughing at me. Freak you, skull! It's pure coincidence that i pick another game with same release year with last year ones. They're both about a lone soldier (because i play alone) against dozens of  enemy. You may know that Cabal is quite famous because it defines a genre of arcade-y gallery shooter really well. If you don't know about it yet, i'm more than happy to introduce you about it. So here we go.   

 

There's no backstory on both attraction mode and start of the game, so i have no clue about enemies or protagonist's raison d'être. So i can just insert his reason: to free his country here, to make the article more relevant to independence day celebration. Your control is quite simple. First button to shoot. Second button to throw grenade that deal moderate damage within small area. Third button to roll, so you can dodge bullets, and explosion. Destroy the enemies until enemy bars are all red then you will proceed to next stage to the same thing again. Left and right direction to move your soldier along with his crosshair but the crosshair have quite significant more sensitivity than him. Up and down direction to move the crosshair up or down. Hold shoot button to make the man stands still while you can move his crosshair freely. By the way, said crosshair doesn't present at this screenshot at the moment. Sorry!

 

There's also items that you can pick up like grenade and 500 score points here. They appear from destroyed sceneries or enemies. Sometime grenade item come from enemy's grenade that you shot. Yes, you can destroy enemy's projectiles by shooting at them. In fact, that's another defensive option you have beside rolling away from them. Your shoot is hitscan while enemy's is always in form of projectile. Some are slow, some are fast and some left temporary explosion trail. You tend to be outnumbered. Also you die in one hit, so be careful!

 

Beside enemy's footsoldier, you have to fight against tanks, treadless tanks or common called as panzers, choppers, and infantry trucks. Fret not! Your standard firearm can obliterate them with relative ease. If standard rifles and guns can be used to deal with any armored vehicle like here, our post-independence wars will be totally in our favor. =P

 

Attacking enemy's airfield, proves that our hero here has strategic thinking like guy in Gunforce. You probably think "Why destroy the plane when you can use it to destroy this place? Make our hero work easier". The reason is simple: he's just infantry, he doesn't have pilot license or any flight experience. Thus he resort by torn any planes in half. I mean look at that plane on right. It doesn't have whole integrity, it has separated ones instead.

 

Oh, there's elite kind of enemy's soldier who is in white uniform and can occasionally roll away from my shoot. And unlike his regular peers who immediately vanish once they're dead, he got carried by medics when he's goner. Shooting these red-cross guys will reward you with grenade pick up even though it's clearly against Geneva Convention. That's horrible military education, TAD.

 

There's weapon pick-up that improves your rampage, like this MP40 submachine gun. There's also the strongest weapon: BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) which i forgot to show you. Sorry! 3=

 

At the end of every 4th stage, there's boss fight. My attempt to mock on that chubby design of the chopper, is paid by my death. I keep missing its bullets. I think they're easier to hit when they're new from boss's cannon. Next time, i'll do better.

 

Some stage has pool. A portion of footsoldier is replaced by frogmen. Not much else i can say.

 

I manage to capture enemy's airplane that about to bomb me. But in return, my rib get shot. This shows how bad i am at playing the game much my dedication to you, reader.

 

Look at how beautiful this place is. I think this is enemy general's vacation place or something. So i have to lay destruction on this majestic place, which is kind of shame. Including this palm tree that has strange integrity. When i shoot its leaf part, it just falls down like rock fall from height. Weird, isn't?

 

Yet another stage with watery part. But this particular one has huge of it. It's like Whack-A-Mole but replace mole with frogmen, and hammer with automatic rifle.

 

Then a submarine appears as boss's stage. This one is easier because its position is relatively in the same spot and its bullets travel fast that i just have to focus on dodge than try to shoot them.    

 

Next stage takes place in warehouse, another vital spot to attack. Sometime piranha plant come from one of those pipes on the front (that act as my protection). No, of course not. I was lying. I have to spice things up on this repetitive gameplay. Even with enemies that sometime appear on that stairs in front of me, doesn't make it more interesting.

 

Surely, there's ship on waterfront. But said ship doesn't try to attack me with its battery cannons. It only serve as platform for some soldier who try to throw grenade at me. I don't know if that caravan/trailer is important or not, but i will destroy it anyway. Or maybe that's mobile portable potty. Great! My enemies will have really hard time to dig latrine once i destroy it.

 

My enemy's response of me blast their last personal-sanitary facility: sending a truck that constantly detaches cannon lorries. Yet another easy boss fight. The lorries are quite easy to dispose while the truck moves in fixed pattern: from right to left. They should starts that destroyer's engine and bombard me with those battery cannons. They really should.

 

This stage is specially lush green. The trees can't be destroyed but those sheds/huts can. I'm sorry to whoever own them. Probably some homeless or dark witchcraft practitioner.  

 

I have to admit that after 5th stage or so you don't get any more interesting in term of gameplay, except for the bosses. At least, the soldier jauntily prance each time he cleared the stage always amuses me. I mean, look at him! He's happily celebrating that he survives the battle and moves toward to fulfill his noble goal. Godspeed him!

 

I try to hit that old church's bell. But i destroy the building instead while the bell is still intact. Whooops! 

 

Another easy boss battle here. There's 3 cannon nests. They can close their nest to make them invincible but can't attack. They take not so many damage before destroyed. I kind of questioning the difficulty curve of the boss fights in this game. But should you die once, the boss's health bar is completely restored. So you have to finish every boss in one sitting. So there's that.

 

Is that building on the left made from cheese? Very strange architecture.

 

Middle-eastern mountains setting, tons of enemies, lone protagonist, tanks and helicopters. These reminds me of Rambo's movie. Too bad i don't have red headband.

The game is tired of me complaining about easy boss fight that it now throws the difficult ones: a main turret/cannon with 5 younglings. The young ones are easy to dispatch but they will respawn immediately. The only way to decrease Foe's health bar is to damage the main turret/cannon. The lower its health bar, the faster they shoots and respawn. Even though the little ones has fixed shooting pattern: diagonal left and right, this boss battle is really hard that i have to use savestate in the middle of it. After die and loadstate so many times, i figure that the best way to defeat this boss: stay in most left part of the screen, shoot the most left turret, then the second most left ones, then the main ones and repeat. Making triangle pattern of chain-shooting. Funny thing is i don't recall about this boss battle from my previous playthrough. But it's kind of reasonable to treat this battle as unmemorable because of how tedious it is.

 

Turns out, it's the last boss. The mountain that i assume is last enemy's stronghold, is falling apart for some reason. Transport heli come to pick me up then i can be titled as "War Hero that like to prance around", receive medal of honor, and get big fat reward. Happy End!

 

Or send to next dangerous mission. At least i have cigar break (even tough i don't like smoking). As i mentioned before that TAD's Cabal (1988) defines the genre of arcade gallery shooter. The gameplay is simple yet so full-of-action even though it gets repetitive because it don't feature new lesser enemies like its sequel Blood Bros. or the slightly altered version of it: Hard Times. But for 1988's game, Cabal's gameplay is interesting and fun (especially if you compare it with P.O.W). The music are grainy and relatively not good. Though i appreciate TAD for making different theme for each boss battle. The only good ones is the victory fanfare. I probably want it as my ringtone. The graphic are good though bit dry in color. The game can be finished in an hour or so but remember about the tricky part of boss battle that i mentioned. The enemies are fun to blast but the footsoldier's hitspot is small or loose, so i prefer destroying vehicles. Yes, they absorb more damage but at least they don't dodge and have bigger hitspot. Besides, they fill the quota more than the soldiers.

To sums my review: Cabal (1988) is quite tedious game, but magnificent game nonetheless and i love it. I can recommend you to play this game. But don't expect to live your dream of mowing soldiers with machine gun like John Rambo does. It only happen like 40% of the time especially if you keep using the standard rifle that i suspect to be rifle that player uses in FPS game 'Chasm'. But i can't confirm that as i never play it. Bye and Salam Merdeka!