3 4 2 5 1

2 4 5 3 1. How anyone can earnestly say that the one with the ex-President of the United States surfing a Harrier Jet piloted by his Vampire friend isn't the best baffles me.

Gameplay: 5>2>1>PW>3>4

Story: 2>1>3>4>5>PW

Overall: 2>1>5>3>4/PW

3 1 5 2 4 PW

3 5 1 2 4. (barely touched PW)

Probably an unpopular sorting, but man... I *really* like Phantom Pain, warts and all. And I *really* didn't like 4, despite it having some great stuff.

2 being so low does not mean I dislike it, however. In fact, I love it. There's just a long gap between 2 and 4 for me.

4 1 5 3 2

5 is so difficult to rank because it's at once the best game of them all and the worst metal gear game.

I only played 5 myself (watched the rest in Metal Gear Scanlon) so I can only truly judge them on story. This is basically my list, but I think PW deserves to be above 5, and potentially above 4.

2 is the best, and 3 is overrated.

• 2: The meta stuff
• V: Hey, that game is still really fun to play
• 3: Great encounters and story
• 1: That classic story
• 4: At the time I loved it, but I'm afraid that game is now too bloated for its own good. If it holds up better than I think it does, then swap 1 and 4.
• PW: [I never finished it, but knowing what I know of the story, it will probably be towards the bottom]

2 > 3 > 1 > 4 > PW > 5

1. My feelings on MGS2 are quite apparent, it is post-modern, the final 3rd of the games transcends video games
2. MGS3 is the best crafted story & stands up there with any other video game, also has some amazing gameplay scenarios
3. MGS1's limitations prevent it from getting above 2 & 3 but what it brought to the table & its profound effect on video games easily gets it 3rd spot for me
4. MGS4 is a beautiful send-off for some amazing characters, loved the weapon customisation but the gameplay was merely a decent first try & the overall product didn't reach its potential IMO
5. Hardware limitations made PW a game of 2 halves, a well crafted story & half decent video game around it
6. MGSV was the best in terms of gameplay & the worst in probably ever other aspect.

PS. If this was Metal Gear & not Metal Gear Solid then Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance would get at least 3rd spot, I'd have to have a good think about MGR vs MGS3.

I like them equally, except for five which I think is perhaps the worst of the ones I played due to the story and setting (the only Metal Gear game I never finished was Portable Ops, but I watched all cutscenes on YouTube), but it's great nonetheless. It's one of those 'don't make me choose' kind of things, so I won't. I don't feel strongly negative toward any of them; they all just have the same issues to me, which is (conflictingly) too many cutscenes. I say conflicting because the cutscenes are partially what makes me love the series, but more gameplay would be nice in the pre-Peace Walker games. Also, in preparation for five, I replayed them all back-to-back several months prior and the bits where they beat you over the head with 'war is bad' can become grating. Another thing is, as awesome as Solid Snake is - one of my favorite video games characters ever - he does have a lot of rhetorical questions. Lastly, some of the dialogue/voice work is too anime-y. For me personally, I still find the older ones very playable for what they are and it just takes relearning the mechanics.

1. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
2. Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes
3. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
4. Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake
5. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
6. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
7. Metal Gear Solid
8. Metal Gear
9. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

If I were to rank Rising it would be #2 between Snake Eater and Ground Zeroes, but it's such a different thing gameplay-wise that I can't really group it together with the others. Twin Snakes would be #8 below the original MGS but above Metal Gear 1.

2, 3, 5, 1, 4

Sons of Liberty delivered a staggeringly prescient message (so much so that it almost defied understanding at the time) alongside gameplay that still holds up.

Snake Eater is the only entry in the series with a coherent self-contained narrative and it's mechanics built upon the first two titles enough to wobble the entire structure without quite breaking it.

Phantom Pain (with which I mentally lump-in Ground Zeroes) has the most rock-solid gameplay in the series by a wide margin and gets extra points for brevity in storytelling as it trades Kojima's trademark long-windedness for the tacit admission that broad thematic strokes were always the point.

Solid remains a high-water mark for early 3D gaming and has a story not yet off-rails, but has aged equally poorly as it's contemporaries.

Guns of the Patriots is fucking hogwash fan-service, erroneously emphasizing a plot that had reached Time Cube levels of incomprehensibly and doubling down on the copy and paste approach to boss design. Not only did it miss the mark in prognosticating a la Sons of Liberty, it managed to do it without a single memorable event outside of a cinematic. It remains the only game to which I have fallen asleep during a cutscene only to wake up later during the same cutscene.

Peace Walker is a videogame-ass-videogame that feels unremarkable compared to the rest of the series with a plot that starts at Sonichu-level fanfictioning and ends somewhere between the sexual tendencies of a criminal and a big stack of "who gives a fuck?".

I love 3 so much. I know it has a lot of tedious bullshit, and if someone told me they thought it was the worst I wouldn't tell them they're wrong, but the boss encounters are too good and the story is great and relatively self contained.

3>4*>1>5>2>PW

*4 is only this high after playing the other games. I played this one first (I know), and it sucked ass, but when I understood all the fanservice and conclusions to a decade of story I loved it.

3 is my favourite because it's the best realization of the "classic" MGS gameplay, combined with the best overall story and characters in the series. Naked Snake is easily the most charismatic and entertaining protagonist in the series, and the way it shows his "fall" was great.

1 is just a good story with gameplay that holds up surprisingly well.

5 is one of the weaker stories (but not the worst, I liked the intrigue and there was some great stuff in the tapes, as bad as the presentation of "tapes" is), but by far the best gameplay in the series, and my favourite stealth game ever.

2 has great meta stuff, but man does playing it kinda suck, and man, do all the characters suck, and man, is it just a retread of MGS1 but not even close to as good. I don't hate it, it's just weirdly boring considering all the neat revelations.

PW is actually my most hated because of how it retcons what we thought was the "fall" of Big Boss when he was betrayed by his country and forced to kill his mentor/lover/whatever that relationship was, to some stupid thing about how a Robot Boss giving up her life to prevent nuclear war was a betrayal of him and everything he did after that point was just a babyman tantrum. Also the story was just kinda nothing, the characters barely existed for the most part, and YOU CAN'T CRAWL WHILE PRONE.

This series is probably my favourite video game narrative. I really wonder if we'll ever see something like MGS4 again where so much history all comes together on that level of spectacle.

52341 my prefs have updated over the years based on how sick i was of dumbass video game storytelling

In terms of overall package, it is the best MGS. I usually go to bat for 4, but it has huge pacing issues and it's really hard to get over the length of those cut scenes after you have played it once (or a few times in my case).

2 4 5 3 1

They're all great though. Sons of Liberty is probably one of my top 5 games of all time.

2 5 1 4 GZ 3 PW

5 plays the best but lacks the story and boss fights of other MGS games. 1 doesnt hold up well but has a lot of great moments (nostalgia helps a lot as well). I feel like 3 and 4 both tried to do open world but never really committed to it. PW was a pretty big improvement over portable ops but it still isnt great.

I don't think it's fair comparing PW to the console big boys and I probably shouldn't have even put in the list but a major aspect of the MGS story to me is how its told and motion comic just doesn't do it justice. I remember liking some parts of the narrative but it really suffered from bad prequelitis that really rubbed me the wrong way. As disjointed and unfinished 5 was, it delivered moments I'll remember for a long time with the kind of flare I wanted and expected from the latest MGS game.

I still really like PW though and thought it was worth putting in the list. What they achieved gameplay-wise with 5 was only possible because of the bedrock formed with PW. It's an awesome portable title, one I spent over 50 hours with and deserves to me mentioned but echoes of its predecessors haunt the uninspired story of PW.

But who knows, maybe we'd be on the same page if experienced it the same way.

1>3>2>5>4>PW

1, 3, 2, 5, 4, PW.

Although that kinda chops and changes from time to time. I feel like, if I actually played through the rest of Peace Walker, it might bump above 4 or 5. I kind of hate how The Boss is trotted out post MGS 3 and how Paz went from a peace-loving schoolgirl (which would make her signing up with Zero a sensible plot point) to a PEACE HATING ADULT. Not only that but an adult who Big Boss cares for after she tries to murder him and destroy his base.

The timeline post-MGS3 is Kojima's worst work.

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