MS5 (MS5.WAD)

MS5

by Malcolm Sailor

MSSCRAPS
MS1	MS2	MS3	MS4	MS5

The last act of the boy wonder was to publish all of his unreleased outtakes and incomplete fragments as Assorted Scraps and Leftovers. Uploaded to the /idgames /prefabs directory at the end of 2000, the intent was to allow them to serve as the inspirational springboard for any aspiring author. A handful of these maps were actually fully functional (if not realized) levels. He collected six of them into MS1.WAD for Doom II. MS5 has the distinction of being Malcolm's second release for id's original trilogy after 1996's SKULL. I doubt whether it uses any advanced source port features but Sailor implied that no serious bug-quashing was performed. You might be better off playing it in any limit-removing .EXE.

This feels like the start of a wicked cool Deimos-style level. The opening has some gnarled roots encasing gore prisons. The use key gets you nowhere so you have no idea where to start and shooting anything but the right bit leaves you locked in with a quad of Barons. I imagine that this could be frustrating to some players. If you choose wisely, though, you can run and be subsequently surprised by a caged Cyberdemon with the goat men still hot on your tail. Being serially outgunned is Malcolm to the core but you're usually given a Berserk and a scenario where you can use it. This has a much stronger feeling of survival horror.

It's out of the frying pan and into the fire since the next step hides you from Cybie while simultaneously exposing you in a pit full of cacodemons. The pressure continues, especially since the Barons are more than capable of following thanks to some monster teleporter lines. The only way out is up and through a high ground bunker flush with shotgun guys. The narrative action is pretty cool since this becomes the turning point, supposing you survive being turned into Swiss cheese. It's not much of a stretch to kill the cacodemons. Single shotty vs. four Barons is less than compelling, though.

The final encounter in the belabored adventure tries to set you up in a hammer / anvil scenario with Barons in the shell-laden room and cacos at your back. Thanks to some exploitable monster blocking lines, though, you can con the two goat men into serially slaughtering all of the big-mouthed floatie thingies. I doubt whether it presents a serious obstacle to speed runners either since the main limiting factor is the timer on the iron curtain that pops up over the gargoyle alcoves. You can easily retreat to safety, wait out the timer, and then run right back in. It looks really annoying to full clear on its face due to the exclusive shotgun action. I bet that you could goad the Cyberdemon into handling the running of the bulls, though, at least before you trigger its killing crusher.

This map also has the distinction of featuring in Xaser's Zen Dynamics, specifically the starting area of MAP04 - "City of Dis" - alongside the fragment found in MS2's MAP22. It's the part with all the creepy mancubus fleshpods. Both products ended up being pretty atmospheric but ZENDYN_X erred more toward creepy whereas the original is oppressive and in your face. It's an interesting take from Malcolm, combining his later love of smothering the player with his earlier fondness for obtuse progression. The latter was usually tempered by restricting the space where you have to hunt and this release is no different.

It looks small but the intense action and overwhelming walls of HP makes this a more fully-realized level than I thought it was going to be. It's certainly different from Skull which did a pretty good job of making you feel more like the Slayer and less One Doomed Space Marine. MS5 is another facet of Malcolm's creativity, hinted at in his other works but taken here to its logical extreme. It's great to find these final scraps so illuminating.

LITTLE MS SUNSHINE