Whether it’s Snake’s elevator ascent to the rainy cliffs of Shadow Moses or the climactic battle between student and mentor in the final moments of Snake Eater, Hideo Kojima and Konami’s epic spy thriller franchise, Metal Gear, is home to some of gaming’s most iconic moments. Telling a story that spanned multiple console generations and pushed the creative capabilities of video games to their limits, Solid Snake and Big Boss’ adventures are legendary, so much so that many claim they’re among the most important releases the medium has ever produced.

Back in 2015, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain seemingly ended the franchise for good, with Kojima leaving Konami and the Metal Gear Solid IP behind to form his own studio. However, Konami has started resurrecting the series through re-releases and remakes, like Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater coming out later this year. With so many new players experiencing this world of undercover espionage, shady government conspiracy and gruff-voiced dudes with cool eyepatches for the first time, we’ve laid out the chronological order of the Metal Gear Solid series so newcomers and returning fans can catch up.

Jump to:

• How to play in chronological order
• How to play by release order

How Many Metal Gear Solid Games Are There?

Not including remakes, ports or remasters, there are 17 total Metal Gear games: 11 mainline games, five on handheld devices and one on mobile. Although that’s a lot of games, a decent chunk of them are considered non-canon, with their stories overriding events from the main saga and spinning off into their own unique takes on the universe.

2018’s Metal Gear Survive takes place in an apocalyptic reality where a zombie virus has overtaken the world, so it falls outside the main canon. As for the PSP’s Metal Gear: Acid and Metal Gear: Acid 2, they veer from the timeline and tell a new story, making them alternate-timeline spin-offs. Then there’s the Game Boy Color’s Metal Gear: Ghost Babel, which is an alternate-universe Metal Gear sequel that wipes away the events of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, thus removing it from the timeline. And finally, Metal Gear Mobile and Snake’s Revenge have since been deemed non-canon by the community and Kojima himself in interviews.

That leaves 11 games within the main storyline. Each game is considered part of the true Metal Gear Saga, spanning from a fictional alternate-history 1960s to the late 2010s. So, let’s run you through all the games in that story.

Which Metal Gear Should You Play First?

We recommend two potential starting points for Metal Gear. For those interested in the complete saga, we recommend 2023’s Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1, which includes the best available versions of Metal Gear Solid 1–3. Alternatively, for those interested in simply trying out the franchise (and for those with a lower tolerance for older games), we recommend starting with the series’ most contemporary iteration, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

In landmark entertainment news that left James Bond fans feeling shaken, not stirred, Amazon MGM Studios has taken full control of the 007 franchise from long-time producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. While there are plenty of reasons to worry here, the fact of the matter is that there are already spinoff books, games, comics, etc, etc, not to mention the original novels by Ian Fleming. Dozens of writers, actors, artists, and more have tackled James Bond and his extended cast. And with Amazon’s reported ambitions to turn James Bond into a “universe,” a la Marvel and Star Wars, and billions of dollars at stake, the Bond franchise has no time to die.

Naturally, this was one of Broccoli’s concerns in giving up the rights, that Amazon MGM would try to expand too quickly or cast a name actor in the role of the secret agent. Will Amazon hold true to these ideals, or are we about to get Timothée Chalamet as the next 007? Likely not the latter (all apologies to Chalamet), but Amazon has already tried to create their own spy franchise with the Russo Brothers produced Citadel, and international spinoffs Citadel: Diana and Citadel: Honey Bunny. Those have generally lacked critical acclaim (except for Honey Bunny), and at least domestically haven’t really broken through to audiences in the same way as other Amazon hits like The Boys.

…Or more to the point, Amazon’s dudes with guns shows like Reacher, Jack Ryan, and Bosch. In fact, one could posit this is a large part of the reasoning behind Amazon shelling out a billion dollars more to own Bond: some of their most successful series have already been white men, with guns, their names in the title, based on book series. Unlike the money Amazon plunked down for Lord of the Rings (your mileage may vary on how successful Rings of Power has been), buying James Bond outright based on the data available is one of the safest purchases Amazon could make. Prime Video audiences already flock to shows about guys like James Bond, so why not James Bond himself?

One other detail you might not be aware of: Amazon already made a James Bond TV show. Seriously. Titled 007: Road to a Million, the reality game show streamed in 2023, was hosted by Brian Cox, and was picked up for a second season before the first even hit Prime Video. Only tangentially related to Bond by the idea that Cox is playing a pseudo-Bond villain while contestants race to win one million pounds, the series wasn’t a big hit but it does show that Amazon has already played in the TV space with 007. And as just one extra funny tidbit, Cox thought he was signing up for the next Bond movie. He was not, so maybe Amazon could do right by him in the future.

But wait, there’s more! Back in 1954, an anthology series titled Climax! aired the first-ever adaptation of “Casino Royale,” the Ian Fleming novel, before it was later committed to film multiple times. Point being, there’s not much of a history of TV for James Bond, but just as the franchise has had some of its most lauded installments in video games (have you ever played GoldenEye for the N64?), comics, and more, James Bond isn’t quite the sacred cow we think of, when it comes to adaptation.

Mind you, there have been no announcements that Amazon is forgoing film entirely, and likely they won’t. MGM isn’t the studio it once was, but for every Red One that hits theaters, they still have the Oscar-nominated Nickel Boys. There’s plenty of reason to believe that even without the Broccolis, Amazon MGM will aim to do right by the Bond franchise.

And frankly, is there anything that is out of left field about the idea of a franchise extension? While perhaps cutting Bond theatrically entirely and instead doing a TV streaming version of Bond might be the ultimate nightmare of cinephiles, there is a wealth of fascinating characters who revolve around Bond that often have far more chance of character growth than the main character himself. Bond, over decades, has remained relatively static – the recent Craig movies aside – while Q, M, Moneypenny, and even Felix Leiter always seem to have a lot more going on between the scene or two Bond spends checking in with them per film.

Would a series where Q has to go out of the lab and use his own gadgets be so terrible? How about Felix having to deal with the fallout of Bond blowing up the latest supervillain plot on the American side? And given the wealth of villains and henchmen in the Bond universe who have inspired dozens of fanfics, tributes, and knockoffs, an anthology series that gave them each more time in the sun could be a lot of fun. Who hasn’t wondered how Jaws got those jaws?

There’s also an opportunity here to flesh out the character of James Bond through a serialized TV show in a way that has not, for the most part, been afforded the character on the big screen. Aside from the rare instance where Bond suffers a sprained ankle at the beginning of the movie, the character has been functionally immortal, down to switching his face like a Time Lord. It wasn’t until the recent Daniel Craig films that Bond was allowed to have some sort of growth, though even then it was relegated to “bummed about the death of his girlfriend” for the majority of the Craig movies, and “old” in the last one.

The lone exception is Skyfall, arguably the best Bond movie of all time… Because it truly challenged James emotionally and moved the series forward to almost a logical conclusion. The next movie reset things in many ways, but imagine being able to see that kind of arc over 10, 20, or even 30 episodes (we’re not going to go crazy and suggest a streaming show go a full 22 episodes a season or anything like that)? You likely won’t get 10 Skyfalls in a row, but if you can get some nods to the ambition of that film in there, viewers could be in for something truly special.

The flip side is that Amazon could not look to the obvious – i.e. their dudes with guns shows – and instead take the route of Lord of the Rings, and deliver a prequel all leading up to the birth of James Bond. To that, perhaps they need look no further than Pennyworth, a goofy show with a host of loyal fans that nevertheless confused casual viewers as to why we were getting a show about Batman’s future butler. Or, for example, The Rings of Power, a show with a hot Sauron and virtually no rings in the first season that tested the patience of even the most loyal fans.

That’s the potential nightmare scenario, that Amazon will think with their algorithm instead of their heart. Even at their worst, there’s a charm the Broccoli family and others managed to bring to the Bond franchise, with the same rhythms, the same big explosion, the same good girl gone bad and bad girl gone good, time and again. In the streaming era, we’re far from the place where you could deliver the poetry of a Bond movie on an episodic basis. To turn it into yet another serialized spy drama (or worse, a serialized prequel spy drama) risks making it lose that specialness and instead slot in with Netflix’s The Night Agent, The Diplomat, and The Recruit, or god help us Citadel, instead of being its own, unique thing.

This is the trick, really, and it is with any potential cinematic universe: what makes it different? In Bond’s case, up until now, it was that it existed mostly on the big screen, every few years, and delivered a level of action spectacle and plot comfort that TV has been creeping on for decades. If Amazon does want to turn the house Ian Fleming built into a multi-platform franchise, then they need to reckon with what makes Bond so unique. If they can figure that formula out, and perhaps build out that supporting cast, too (Ben Whishaw in a Q series? Come on!), then rather than the death sentence some fans have called this deal, the Bond franchise will die another day.

I think the first time I really understood what Moroi was, I mean the down-in-your-bones feeling you get when you’re playing something and the lighting bolt of understanding strikes you right on the noggin, was when my character fed himself to a talking meat-grinder because “something inside [him] screams let’s do it!” Admittedly, it would have probably been funnier if Moroi had flashed a game over screen, and most games might’ve as a gag, but Moroi plays it straight. Into the meat-grinder you go, head-first. It chews for a bit and spits you out. You taste terrible, you see, and the grinder’s palate for manflesh is, for whatever reason, a bit more refined. Later on, you can offer it a severed hand (don’t ask) and it’s happy about that, and to grind up the bones and turn the leftover dust over to you so you can use it to help an old woman make “soup” (again, don’t ask), but eating the hand causes it to explode. “You are on fire,” your character remarks glibly as the machine spits binary. But you have your bone dust and it’s not your job to save sentient meat grinders who have developed a taste for longpig, so off you go to break some more stuff. And I said, out loud, “Ah, it’s a game like that.” And I was intrigued.

The word moroi comes from Romanian folklore; it’s used to describe a vampire or ghost, or in some cases, a phantom that rises from the grave to draw energy from the living. I don’t know which part of the definition Moroi the game draws from. What I do know is this: your character, a bearded bear of a man, wakes up in a strange prison, in pain, with no memory of how he got there. Everyone else seems to know him, but he doesn’t recognize any of them. But maybe, as a very tall man in a very strange hat tells him, that’s for the best.

Your first order of business is to get out, and that means solving simple puzzles, many of which boil down to “acquire item, take it somewhere.” Go talk to the cannibal eating himself as performance art who asks that, if eating himself isn’t his magnum opus, lightning strikes him dead. When lightning strikes him dead, take his severed hand and bring it to the sentient meat grinder, who gives you bone dust before catching fire. Then you take that to the tall man in the funny hat, who tells you to take it to the old lady making soup (she needs some salt; you have bone dust. Same thing, right?) before reminding you that “Death will meet you soon enough” and weirdly offering up that his name is Edgar. So it’s off to the old woman, who gratefully accepts your “salt” and is pulled headfirst into the cauldron by the soup to see what’s on the other side. “I’m starting to think that wasn’t soup,” your character says. Noticing a pattern here?

On and on it goes, whether it’s a toenail from an overfed corpse still being pumped full of… something, or taking the old woman’s spoon and using it to wake up the rat with the important job of running in his wheel and powering The Horrors (and the doors). But then something strange happens. Moroi gives you a sword, and throws a bunch of enemies at you, and that’s where the magic happens. Combat is simple — the top-down, twin-stick perspective seems a little weird when you’re solving puzzles, but then you get to a combat section and it’s like “Oh” — but it’s fast and hits feel weighty and satisfying and it’s got Doom’s Glory Kills, which quite literally teleport you across the screen for very satisfying slow-motion executions that drops health. And then you get a minigun that shoots harpoons. And that’s rad.

When Moroi is flipping between the two — quick, simple puzzles like using the number of corpses in a freezer to work out a door code, and combat sections against multiple enemies howling for blood like it’s Black Friday and you’ve just snatched the last George Foreman grill — it’s pretty grand. But there’s also plenty of weird stuff beyond that, too. At one point, you save a duck with human teeth from being turned into a wide variety of duck-based cuisine and he rewards you with his teeth so you can reinforce your weapon, and then explains the way out through bloody gums.

Sometimes messages pop up on-screen offering cryptic hints at something more. Other times, story details are left to collectibles scattered around the environment. I particularly liked the one that listed Duck of Eternal Torment as a type of potential meal prepared from our toothy friend, and the one where the cleaning lady resigns because the furniture is upside down every day and she’s convinced the place is cursed and/or haunted.

And it’s never afraid to be weird. One of my Moroi demo’s last segments thrust me into the role of a strange, winged doll tasked by his mother (another doll) with helping his brothers – an increasingly rude group of trees – survive some incoming horror that’s killing all of them by literally giving away pieces of himself to do it. It’s an odd segment, but a compelling one, and when the credits rolled shortly thereafter, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, but I am interested in seeing where it goes from here.

There are some things about Moroi that concern me: my demo was buggy (It crashed once;I got stuck between a door and a bookcase a couple times; once I fell through the floor) and some of the writing is uneven. But those are things that can be ironed out. Moroi marries the macabre and the mysterious, and it often went to places I didn’t see coming in my half-hour demo. I’m still not sure what a moroi is in this context, but I would like to find out. After all, who can resist a game with a meat grinder that lusts for the flesh of men and a duck with human teeth?

Genshin Impact is getting an official cookbook later in 2025, and IGN has an exclusive first look.

Genshin Impact Official Cookbook: Culinary Journeys Across Teyvat, by Thibaud Villanova, comes out September 2, 2025 and “invites readers to explore, taste, and experience the fantasy world of Teyvat in an entirely new way.” There are even prefaces from Michelin star chefs Paul Pairet and Mory Sacko.

As you’d expect, the cookbook lets Genshin Impact recreate dishes from the game, accompanied by cooking quest givers the Gourmet Supremos. There are 60 recipes designed to take budding chefs on a culinary journey through the first four major regions of Teyvat: Mondstadt, Liyue, Inazuma, and Sumeru.

The images, below, show recipes for ‘Dinner of Judgment,’ a speciality of Rosaria, the ‘Lighter-Than-Air Pancake,’ and the tantalisingly named Nutritious Meal (V.593). If you’re curious, Nutritious Meal (V.593) revives a character and restores 20% of Max HP, then restores an additional 1,500 HP to the target fallen character with a 120-second cooldown in Genshin Impact itself.

Chef Villanova, who goes by @gastronogeek on Instagram, is no stranger to creating recipes based on video games, and has published more than 16 cookbooks that have sold over 500,000 copies.

As for Genshin Impact, if you’re low on ingredients, take a look at our Genshin Impact codes for some freebies (in-game only, though, not actually edible). For your next trip to Teyvat, here are the current Genshin Impact banners for Version 5.4, and our guide to the best Sigewinne build if you get lucky on her banner.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.