How to play the Metal Gear Solid games in order, by timeline or release
Kept you waiting for this order, huh?
If you’re itching to climb the world’s most dramatic ladder, sneak past some baddies, and invest in one of gaming’s most enduring and entertaining series, you will want to play through the Metal Gear Solid games in order.
Newcomers to the franchise could be put off by the sheer number of releases and not know where to start. Fret not! We’re here to help.
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With the first release happening way back in 1987 and the latest scheduled release being Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater (no confirmed release date as of writing), there’s a lot to get through.
It’s worth noting that there are a number of remakes and spin-offs in the series, too, but our focus is on the canon entries. Several of the games are also hard to come by nowadays, with hefty price tags placed on retro games.
Regardless, it’s definitely worth working your way through the series.
Read on to find out what the Metal Gear Solid games release date order is and to discover how to play the Metal Gear games in story timeline order.
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How to play the Metal Gear Solid games in release date order
A simple way to play through the Metal Gear Solid games is to do so in release date order. This will put you in the shoes of series veterans who have been playing the games since before Solid ended up in the title and is a fine way to explore this world.
Here is how to play the Metal Gear Solid games in release date order:
- Metal Gear (1987)
- Platform: MSX2 | Buy from gog.com for £4.79
- Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990)
- Platform: MSX2
- Metal Gear Solid (1998)
- Platform: PS1 | Buy from CEX for £28 or find it on eBay
- Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001)
- Platform: PS2 | Buy from Amazon for £32.80 or find it on eBay
- Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (2004)
- Platform: PS2 | Buy from Amazon for £12.69 or find it on eBay
- Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (2006)
- Platform: PSP | Buy from Amazon for £20.08 or find it on eBay
- Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008)
- Platform: PS3 | Buy from Amazon for £25.40 or find it on eBay
- Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (2010)
- Platform: PSP | Buy from CEX for £20 or find it on eBay
- Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (2013)
- Platform: PS3, Xbox 360, PC (Steam) | Buy from Amazon for £14.98 or on Steam
- Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes (2014)
- Platform: PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PC (Steam) | Buy from Amazon for £16.94 or on Steam
- Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015)
- Platform: PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PC (Steam) | Buy from Amazon for £16.79 or on Steam
Metal Gear Solid spin-offs, non-canon and remakes in release date order
- Snake’s Revenge (1990)
- Platform: NES | Find it on eBay
- Metal Gear Solid (Ghost Babel) (2000)
- Platform: Game Boy Color | Find it on eBay
- Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (2004)
- Platform: GameCube | Buy from CEX for £75 or find it on eBay
- Metal Gear Acid (2004)
- Platform: PSP | Buy from Amazon for £19.99 or find it on eBay
- Metal Gear Acid 2 (2005)
- Platform: PSP | Buy from Amazon for £29.99 or find it on eBay
- Metal Gears Solid Mobile (2008)
- Platform: Mobile Phones/N-Gage
- Metal Gear Solid Touch (2009)
- Platform: iOS
- Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D (2012)
- Platform: 3DS | Buy from CEX for £65 or find it on eBay
- Metal Gear Solid: Social Ops (2012)
- Platform: iOS, Android
- Metal Gear Survive (2018)
- Platform: PS4, Xbox One, PC | Buy from Amazon for £6.75 or on Steam
- Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater
- Platform: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC (Steam) | Wishlist on Steam
How to play the Metal Gear Solid games in story timeline order
More complicated than playing the games in release date order, playing the Metal Gear Solid games in story timeline order is another way to go. We’re focusing solely on the mainline canon story entries in this list.
There’s a lot to get through, but we begin with Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (which, coincidentally, is being remade again for current-gen consoles as Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater). Of course, while we’ve tried to avoid them as best we can, story spoilers do follow.
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
The first game in chronological story order is actually the fifth in terms of release date. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater makes for a great jumping-in point to the series and sees a young Naked Snake (as in name, not in uniform) in 1964 infiltrating Tselinoyarsk within the Soviet Union to rescue a Russian scientist who was working on the Shagohod nuclear weapon and is trying to defect.
Buy Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater from Amazon
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
Portable Ops is set six years after the events of Snake Eater and finds the protagonist in South America. Snake is targeted by former employers FOX and chronicles the beginnings of FOXHOUND and the events that shape Big Boss as a character.
Buy Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops from Amazon
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
Set in Costa Rica during 1974, Peace Walker continues the story of Big Boss and leads us to the creation of Outer Heaven — a military state. The game sees you save Costa Rica from an unknown army of soldiers and their nuclear warhead named, you guessed it, Peace Walker.
Buy Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker on CEX
Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes
Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is set in 1975, just a year after the events of Peace Walker. It’s a precursor to The Phantom Pain and is often bundled with the main game (although it can still be purchased separately). You play as Big Boss once more, working again with Militaires Sans Frontières to infiltrate a black site in Cuba to extract Paz Ortega Andrade and Ricardo “Chico” Valenciano Libre.
Buy Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes from Amazon
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
In 1984, nine years after the events of Ground Zeroes, Snake is sent into the open-world expanses of Soviet-occupied Afghanistan and the Angola-Zaire border to enact revenge on those who placed him in a coma. The game tells us about the formation of the Diamond Dogs private military company.
Buy Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain from Amazon
Metal Gear
In the 1987 original Metal Gear, you play as Solid Snake in 1995 who, working for FOXHOUND, heads off on a mission to Outer Heaven to destroy the eponymous Metal Gear (a walking tank capable of launching nukes anywhere in the world).
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake
Set in 1999, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake takes Solid Snake out of retirement and sends him to Zanzibar Land to rescue Dr. Kio Marv and destroy the revised Metal Gear: Metal Gear D. The game didn’t release in the west for 15 years, when it became a part of Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. The best way to play it these days is to wait and pick up a copy of recently revealed Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection.
Metal Gear Solid
Perhaps the best-known entry in the series, this PS1 classic is actually set rather late on in the series’ story chronology. Taking place in 2005, Solid Snake comes out of retirement (again) to stop Liquid Snake on Shadow Moses island off the coast of Alaska.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
Set a couple of years after the events of Metal Gear Solid, Sons of Liberty tasks Solid Snake with another mission to destroy a new kind of Metal Gear. Two years after this, you play as Raiden, new recruit of FOXHOUND, to neutralise the threat of the Sons of Liberty and Big Shell.
Buy Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty from Amazon
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
A few years after the events of Metal Gear Solid 2 in 2014, Guns of the Patriots tasks the now old Solid Snake with assassinating Liquid Ocelot in a Middle-Eastern warzone. It’s time to find out why Solid Snake is suffering from accelarated ageing.
Buy Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots from Amazon
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Finally, we have Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. This is set in 2018, four years after the events of Metal Gear Solid 4, and has you play as Raiden once more. This time around, though, Raiden is a cyborg ninja - which is very cool. It’s a fast-paced action game, rather than one based on stealth, developed by Bayonetta folk PlatinumGames. The story tells a plot of vengeance that is still the final piece in the series’ puzzle to this day.
Buy Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance from Amazon
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Authors
Toby Saunders is a freelance writer specialising in Video Game journalism. He has a wealth of experience in the field and is published on many different websites including PCGamesN, Nintendo Life and Pocket Tactics. He has a degree in Film Studies (he gets to write about Film and TV occasionally, too).
