What will I miss if I catch up on Metal Gear Solid now?
I have grown up watching my older brother play all of the Metal Gear Solid games, but with the release of the fifth game, I figured it's better late than never to experience the fantastic series myself from the beginning.
This question already addresses which games I should play to catch up, but I'm concerned about anything I may miss because many of these games are old now. Is there any content or advantages I miss out on for being late to the party (such as multiplayer or exclusive pre-order content)?
Please include Metal Gear Solid V as I can imagine it would take quite a while to get current, especially at the leisurely pace I plan to tackle the series at.
Best Answer
Is there any content or advantages I miss out on for being late to the party?
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think so. The only thing I can think of is MGS4's Metal Gear Online (the multiplayer component), which is no longer active. However, that is to be replaced by MGSV's implementation of MGO, which hasn't been released quite yet. As far as exclusive pre-order content, MGS has been pretty good about not including that, far as I can recall. The series hasn't had much DLC either, MGS4 having been released in 2008 before the DLC craze fully took off. MGSV has DLC slated for it, however.
In fact I would say that now is the best time to play the entire MGS collection, since there are remastered bundles of all the games available, and first three games have already released their "improved" version (Substance for MGS2, Subsistence for MGS3 -- noted for updating the camera from the classic MGS/MGS2 top-down style which worked great in 1 and 2's tight indoor corridors, but did not work quite as well for MGS3's environments, IMO). Avoid playing the Twin Snakes version of MGS1 if you can, it kind of ruins the cutscenes in my opinion.
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Answer 2
About order of playing.
I think if you are going to play at least every single canonical game, it is better to play them in release order, may be skipping Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2 if they are tooooooo old for you (there are metagame jokes in newer games about older games, and they are nice). And the gameplay had matured with every new game, so playing old games after new ones may be somewhat disappointing.
There are good news though - if you are good with playing them chronologically, you don't have to play all the saga right now. The prequels to MGS5 are Metal Gear Solid 3 (PS2, PS3, PS Vita, Xbox360) Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops (PSP only) Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker (PSP, PS3, PS Vita, Xbox360) MGS3 and MGSPW on newer platforms are in the form of MGS HD Collection. PS3 also has MGS The Legacy Collection, which contains even more games.
I haven't played Portable Ops and Peace Walker, and right now I am catching up with Peace Walker on PS3, and also I have read Portable Ops plot on mgs wiki: http://metalgear.wikia.com/wiki/San_Hieronymo_Incident If you can, you should at least try to get and play MGS3 and MGS:PW before MGS5. MGS3 is awesome and sets up the whole series, and MGS:PW is somewhat related to the MGS5 plot. I totally think that Portable Ops can be skipped entirely.
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