On its own, Revengeance is pretty self-contained. It's far enough separated from the events of MGS4 that there's not a lot of legacy stuff you need to be aware of to understand the main thrust of the story. That said, there's a ton of stuff on the periphery of the experience that is going to go way over your head, and a handful of things that are completely glossed over because either you know or you don't and the game isn't going to bother to try and explain it.

I'd say that Revengeance is fine as your last Metal Gear or only Metal Gear but horrible as your first Metal Gear. If you have any designs on ever touching the rest of the franchise, then save Revengeance for much, much later.

@starvinggamer: I think Revengeance is a good first MG for those who don't like the stealth aspect of the series. It still has the same story-telling flair, codec and sillyness. It's just... very PlatinumGame-ish.

At least play MGS4 (which a lot less stealth dependant and more 3rd person shooter) and get a feel for the series and how Raiden was portrayed in that game.

I agree with FLStyle. Play MGS4 as well. It's much less hardcore stealth on the default difficulty and it explains everything involving Raiden (and everything else in the game) in excruciating detail. Also, it's a really great game.

Previous plot points are occasionally brought up, but having knowledge of previous Metal Gear games isn't really necessary for enjoying the game at all or even just following the plot. If you wanted to get into the series I'd probably recommend starting with MGS1 (or the original Metal Gear if you want to go as pure as possible), but Rising is a much better starting point than 2 or 4 IMO.

4 especially will just be incomprehensible if you didn't play the earlier games, and I personally think it's a bad game. The one thing it has over the rest of the Solids are the controls though, which would make going back to earlier entries hard.

You'd be missing out on a ton of small things that are nice touches but kinda inconsequential in the long run. So it's a terrible place to start but all those games are so inter connected that anywhere but the beginning is a horrible place to start.

Play MGS4. Its not a heavy stealth game on the default difficulty. You can play it as a tps and it will tell you A LOT about the story including the back story of raiden.

A lot of things are going to be pretty confusing or just seem bizarre if you run through Revengeance as your first Metal Gear. I'd at least check a wiki or something for Raiden's backstory, or play MGS 2 or 4 to get an idea of how weird and crazy technology is in the Metal Gear universe.

Revengeance's plot is pretty straightforward and cut off from the plots of past games, but all of the elements that make it up are brought from things explained in previous Metal Gear games in kind of a brilliant way. If you know about the Metal Gear universe beforehand, then what's going on will seem kinda awesome. If not it'll just be bizarre and kinda dumb... which I guess is what Metal Gear is all about anyways, but still, at least brush up on some background info.

No... because it's the only game a 'non-stealth gamer' is going to like. It's a great game, you might love it, but calling it a first implies that there's going to be a second, third etc.

Haven't played it but jump to MGS4, you can play it like a 3rd person shooter and try some stealth to get used to it, might enjoy it in the long run