Have you ever read the works of H.P. Lovecraft and thought I could take them? Well now’s your chance with Overflow’s and Hook’s Madshot.
Whether you’re a fan of fast-paced platformers, roguelite mechanics, or the Lovecraft mythos, Madshot has something for everyone. So, grab your mask, choose your weapon, decide upon some dark powers, we’re off to kick Cthulhu’s tentacled behind!
Every Journey Starts Somewhere
I’ve played my fair share of platformers in my day, and Madshot certainly holds up its promise of fast paced platforming action. You’ll have to have your twitch reflexes on point to survive the ever more dangerous hordes of horrors such as zombies, fish people, giant bats, and what I can only describe as a flying nightmare squid.
Madshot offers two distinct gaming modes, one being a journey through a Lovecraftian town, ending with a battle with the Elder God himself. The other is a horde survival mode, where you must survive ever more dangerous waves of opponents.
A Journey to Cthulhu
In the first mode, you must journey from the outskirts of a town to its highest point where Cthulhu lies. (Now, I’m not saying it’s Innsmouth, but it’s probably Innsmouth.) On your way, you’ll take on multiple minions, abominations, and bosses hoping to survive and claim ever greater rewards including gold, alterations, insight, and health upgrades. To help in combat, you are equipped with a pair of pistols and a powerful, mystical mask.
As you complete challenges, you’ll unlock a wide range of other weapons, masks, and power-ups. With these, you can customise your character to match your preferred game style.
If the armies of Cthulhu lay you low, never fear, you can return to the Manor where you can purchase upgrades, with the Aether and Insight you secured in your previous attempts. Invest in stat increases such as increased health and longer range for your attacks, then challenge the town again.
That’s not all though, as Madshot also features a wide range of visual customisations for your character. There are multiple options for different masks and bodies for your character, that range from playing as Santa to Doom Guy. The weapons are also as eclectic, with crazy and famous weapons including candy canes pistols, the BFG, and a pair of the original and only Robocops machine pistols.
Surviving the Legions
The second mode is where I got hooked, Road to Madness is a survival level where you are pitted against thousands of enemies in a huge arena. Survive as long as you can and rack up those kills to earn some gold.
Use this cash in the shop where all the masks, weapons, and sub weapons from the main mode are available to buy. Pick and choose your favourite combination, and maybe you’ll be able to get yourself on the leaderboards. But you’ll need some practice as the top spots are secured by some crazy results!
Within Road to Madness is where the Alteration and Enhancement systems can shine. As you defeat enemies, they’ll drop experience, which allows you to level up. With each new level you have the choice of a new Alteration, Enhancing an existing one, or increasing your health.
What’s more, many Alterations are the base of a whole tree of power-ups that synergize with the first. For example, if you choose to apply stacks of a slowing debuff, a later option could include Freezing enemies when they reach four stacks.
Scattered throughout the waves, you’ll also have to face Aberrations that add an extra level of difficulty to the fight to survive. Killing these larger creatures, though, provides a substantial reward of an increased health pool.
Madshot Official Specifications
Madshot is available on PC through the Steam store. To play it Overflow recommends the following specs:
| Component | Minimum Specs | Recommended Specs |
|---|---|---|
| Operating System | Windows 7 or later | Windows 7 or later |
| Processor | Intel i5 or later | Intel i5 or later |
| Memory | 2GB RAM | 4GB RAM |
| Graphics | NVIDIA 450 GTS / Radeon HD 5750 or better | NVIDIA GTX 460 / Radeon HD 7800 or better |
| Storage | 5GB available space | 5GB available space |
Best PCs to Play Madshot
With these easily achievable specs, Madshot will play like a dream on a wide variety of gaming PCs, but we do have a few recommendations you can pick up today.
OcUK Gaming Kalis
- AMD Ryzen 5 5500 CPU
- NVIDIA RTX 3060 GPU
- 16GB 3200MHz Dual Channel DDR4 RAM
- 500GB M.2 SSD
- Configurable options available
Gigabyte AORUS A5 Gaming Laptop
- Intel Core i7 12700H CPU
- NVIDIA RTX 3060 GPU
- 16GB 3200MHz Dual Channel DDR4 RAM
- 1TB NVMe PCIe Gen 4 SSD
- 15.6″ 240Hz FHD Display
Will you Take on Cthulhu Too?
Will you be blazing a trail through the hordes of abominations serving the Elder God, too? Let us know in the comments below.
- 5 min read
Simon Procter
Author
Having been a gaming nut for longer than he cares to think, Simon landed his dream job over a year ago at Overclockers UK. Since then, he has written many product pages and category texts. He even gets released from the basement to write the odd cheeky blog post. When not working, you can often find him entrenched in World of Warcraft, visiting friends to have his butt whooped in a board game, or with his nose buried in a book.
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The game is a lot of fun if not short for a rougelite! Once you’ve gotten your stats upgraded a bit and learned the enemy attack patterns, it’s hard to not get a game ending build. Wish there was more variety in the boss fights. Endless mode is a great addition!
We get that for sure, as they say knowing your enemy is half the battle. And endless mode is addicting, gets to be such a system hog several hours in though 😀