I've not played anything past 4. I've heard the Peace Walker PSP series is really good. My personal recommendation is 3, especially if you're a fan of the cold war setting. That said, 2 has become very, very relevant as of late. Just... Don't bother with 4. It's a mess, imo.

Others will have more nuanced and insightful opinions, but I will say that MGS 1, 2, and 3 are must-plays and should be played in release order. It preserves the impact of each narrative as originally intended, which in a series like this is very important. MGS 2 is a masterpiece, but MGS 3 is one of my personal favorite games for the setting, story, bosses, gameplay, and absolute banger of a theme song.

MGS 4 is fine of you want to see the continuation of Solid Snake's story, but it gets more bloated than the previous games and didn't satisfy as well IMO.

I don't have as much experience with the series after that outside of Peace Walker, but be prepared for some big changes in terms of narrative and gameplay if you decide to keep going.

Well, I'd sat 5, phantom pain, has the most solid gameplay loop. It's lots and lots of fun to play and holds up to modern games.

2 and 4 are going to have the most relevant politics. 2 is about memes, information warfare, and the internet as a system of control that can define our perception of reality. 4 is about industrial warfare in the 21st century and how in the pre-Ukraine paradigm the MIC was it's own best customer.

3 is a period drama set during the cold war that has the first appearance of many characters and delves in to themes of betrayal, double cross, and hipocrisy.

1 is the og stealth tactics game. The original will likely seem very basic and dated because it was the game that established the norms of stealth action games as we know him. I don't know how the re-imakes play. 1 has many wonderfully weird, melodramatic characters including the series first appearance of a cyborg ninja, Psycho Mantis reading your mind, and Liquid absolutely devouring the scenary.

If you wanted to follow the story you can play tem in order. I think 5 is the weakest storywise due to development problems, but if you chew on it for a while it has some very interesting things to say about cultural imperialism and what it means to hold on to your identity in the face of cultural imperialism.

For gameplay i'd say go in reverse order as there is a direct evolution and improvement in gameplay in each subsequently game. The original game has an extremely clunky interface and "tank controls" while the last game gives the player enormous freedom and fluidity of motion that allows you to pull off all kinds of crazy stunts and make good use of your gadgets and environments.

I would say that metal gear solid is not an instruction in geopolitics, but rather a catalyst that can lead to an understanding of geopolitics. The game's melodramatic characters, sci-fi goofiness, world spanning conspiracies and deep thematic investigations serve to make geopolitics fantastical and exciting in a way that helps bring you closer to the high level concepts, so that when you put down the controller you can't help but wrestling with the game to understand what the hell Kojima was trying to say and how that relates to politics and history as you understand. Mgs is a fiction that casts light on reality's shadows, helping us contextualize things we knew but didn't understand. That's why it's bizarre, often incomprehensible story is critical; it forces us to impose a coherent narrative on the bizarre chaos of politics and war, challenging us to make sense of the 20th and 21st century instead of telling us a version of events.

I always play them in release order because the older mechanics can be a bit janky to go back to.

The first 3 are a must, peace walker is also a good addition and is like a bite sized version of 3. 4 is 4, i personally really like it but its divisive and then 5 i never finished cos its too long. Then there's portable ops and acid which are worth playing if you really like the series. Metal gear rising is also a must and doesn't particularly need the context of any of the other games to be enjoyable, PC version has some odd issues so i picked xbox backwards compat to play that one.

Deffo do the first 3. Duckstation is a solid option for the first game, much better than the shitty konami release.

2 and 3 I'd suggest the HD edition on the xbox 360. If you don't have the disk and series x then you should be able to emulate it i think i haven't tried in a while. I say this because emulating the ps3 or ps2 versions of these games requires you to have pressure sensitive buttons for certain actions. The xbox version however you click the left stick to say cancel a shot for example. If you're feeling adventurous the 3ds version of mgs3 is fun on real hardware, framerate is atrocious though but it has crouch walk and migraine inducing 3d :D

The recent versions konami released are also the xbox hd edition but i think they also just broke some shit cos konami. PC version has mods to fix it.

Peace walker you can either do the hd version or emulate the psp version. The HD one has dual analogue stick support.

4 i don't think is easy to emulate atm. It requires a specific fork of rpcs3 and performance is spotty and may require some sixaxis inputs but worth a try. Otherwise you need a real ps3 to play.

how you play is up to you. The Core games are MGS 1-5 and peacewalker. the other games usually ad some side story elements that are nice to know but less critical to the overarching series plot.(metal gear games, as well as metal gear acid, and portable ops). Survive doesn't exist.

Feel free to play the core games in production (1, 2, 3, Peace Walker, 4, 5) or chronological (3, peace walker, 5(including ground zeroes), 1, 2, 4)

for the timeline of the spinoff titles, classic Metal gear games takes post 5 pre 1 (deals with a character whose identity you learn in 5, but generally not very vital to the plot). Acid takes place in an alt universe after 4, portable ops is between 3 and peacewalker.. The side story games are almost like filler missions where a short plot would take place, but doesn't really critically affect the general plot. It's just there to give more progression to the soldier capabilities of Naked/Solid snake

generally speaking you can sorta break it up into two halves, the former deals with Big Boss (3, Peace Walker, 5) and the latter half is the les enfants terrible trilogy (1, 2, 4) (the MSX games serves as a bridge between the two plots to a small scale, linking a character you see in 5 and characters would see in the latter trilogy)

If you're going through the series, I'd definitely recommend emulating the original versions of MGS1&2 over Twin Snakes. Twin Snakes went too over the top with the campiness. Snake Eater is fantastic. 4's gameplay is good, but it got really long in the tooth with all the campiness and the cutscenes go on forever despite having some interesting themes. Peace Walker and Ground Zeroes/Phantom Pain feel like a linear evolution after 4, and are all really good imo.

Now that you mentioned it, someone just gave me a free xbox so imma finally play Metal Gear Rising. Never played any of the solid games so hope I ain’t too confused

MGS 1 2 and 3 are all essential. 4 is pretty meh, has a ridiculous amount of cutscenes, but also has some fucking amazing boss battles in the final act that I won't spoil. Metal Gear Rising is a spinoff but it's pretty damn fun, one of my favorite games of all time. Give it a whirl.

Release order. MGS2 is the best one. MGS3 has a very different kind of story, but is a refinement of the MGS2 play system, and has its own compelling story.

MGS4 mechanically feels really good, but interrupts its own gameplay too often to show you a cutscene. When you can play it, it's fun. The story gets worse (stupider) from this game and onward.

Peace Walker is a pretty fun game. I enjoyed it on PSP, but there's no doubt that game feels better to play with additional buttons from the HD version. It's literally more ergonomic that way.

MGS5:GZ is a highly re-playable and fun sand box and sets up its successor nicely. MGS5:TPP is an incomplete game that takes too long to beat and under-delivers on what was promised. My excitement and subsequent disappointment over it stopped me from ever pre-ordering a game again, and mostly got me out of AAA gaming.

-- How to play

Emulate as much as you can. If you have a pressure-sensitive DualShock 2 or DualShock 3 you can use those in PCSX2 for MGS2 and MGS3. Otherwise, like Gorb said, try the Xbox360 or Master Collection. Otherwise you'll do unintentional things on the inputs, such as never being able to grab someone in MGS3 without immediately killing them. Some people like the pressure sensitive buttons. I think they're kind of a poor use of the feature, but it is what it is.

Peace Walker emulates nicely on RPCS3, but MGS4 is still a little troublesome with stability and performance. You can still try it, nevertheless.

Play em in release order, they all hold up. I'm a big fan of 2 and 3, personally.

Play them in release order. The msx games are good but have 80s Game Bullshit. Mgs1 is a fair starting point, mgs2 doesn't really work as well of your aren't familiar with mgs1 and mgs2 is the smart post modern one that is pretty mind blowing, mgs3 has a simpler plot but has some pretty big emotional moments and the gameplay is something else. After 3, lower your expectations cause it's a mess after. 4 should have never been made, it's a direct sequel to 2 where 3 is a prequel and the ending of mgs2 was intentionally made follow up proof and it shows. Peace Walker and ground zeroes/5 are prequels as well and aren't as bad as 4, I've even got a soft spot for pw, but after mgs3 the series lost most of the sauce.

If you want to play them definitely play them in release order. MGS1-5, Ground Zeroes and Peace Walker are the must play ones, but Metal Gear Rising is just too fun to skip.

I'd also advise you that you need a whole lot of patience for these games. A significant amount of playtime is spent not actually on gameplay or even on cutscenes, but on codex conversations, which feel genuinely archaic in their worse-than-any-visual-novel presentation. Like I've tried replaying MGS3 recently and I can't believe that there's no way to skip through the voicelines without skipping all of them. In any visual novel you can skip the currently playing voice line and you'll immediately hear the next one, but in a MGS codec call you either listen to every single voice line in full, as as soon as you skip through one you'll just get the text for the next one without the voice acting, making the entire conversation entirely silent (or at least it's this way in MGS3, unless I'm really misremembering things).

Like I've replayed Disco Elysium like three times, which is a game with so much more text than any MGS game, but I've not had the patience to play through any of the MGS games a second time, just because the codec calls require the patience of a saint from you.

Thread image is my new desktop background, thank you.

Also play them in release order as many others have said, I've personally never been very good at the pre MGS1 games but feel free to give them a try if you play 80s games. There are packs that include HD versions of 2, 3 and Peacewalker I believe which would be a great deal if you're playing on console.

Metal Gear Rising Revengeance is the only good metal gear game. (I have only played it and 5)