Ranking the Metal Gear Solid Games

Piotr ranked old Kojima games.

- Piotr Kohnke

When you require an encyclopedia or a two-hour-long YouTube video to explain a franchise like Metal Gear Solid, it can be challenging to rank the titles from worst to best – especially when you love every single entry. So, for the sake of simplicity, this list will only include the numbered titles in the franchise. Whether you enjoy your Snakes solid, liquid, naked, punished, or old – here are my rankings for the five numbered Metal Gear Solid titles.

5. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain/Ground Zeroes

Kojima Productions’ final entry in the franchise possesses arguably the best gameplay the series has to offer. From the macro-management of building, maintaining, and recruiting for Diamond Dogs – to the moment to moment open-world tactical espionage action – Metal Gear Solid V was a whole lot of fun.

Unfortunately, the game fell flat when it came to the story. We could dive down the rabbit hole that is Hideo Kojima’s well-publicized final 12-24 months with Konami, but inevitably the game that landed on our store shelves felt incomplete, like it had more to say – but simply could not. The final story revelations are barricaded behind hours upon hours of grinding through previously played missions at a higher difficulty. Consequently, once players reach those revelations, they do not land as well as they could have. Based on previous entries in the series, the final act of the game did not feel like it stood for what the Metal Gear series is – story-driven.

4. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty