Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear: Brilliant Innovation and Design Chaos

Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear series occupies a peculiar space in action game history. No other franchise has been simultaneously innovative and awkward, intellectually ambitious and narratively self-sabotaging. The games span from 1987 to 2025, introducing ideas that rippled through the medium—stealth systems, fourth-wall commentary, unconventional boss encounters—while simultaneously including design decisions that break games, create unwinnable states, or reduce beloved characters to plot conveniences.

The first Metal Gear established a template refined across decades. Every subsequent game borrowed from its core concepts. The four-mercenary room fight became an invisible-trooper elevator ambush in Metal Gear Solid, which evolved into a hallway confrontation at the Tanker chapter’s end in Sons of Liberty. A brief puzzle involving a guard’s uniform expanded into an entire undercover sequence for Raiden, which transformed into a full camouflage system in Snake Eater. The series functions as an extended conversation with itself, each installment building on inherited ideas. That continuity is remarkable and unusual.

That same first game introduced a flaw demonstrating the dangers of systems-driven design. Metal Gear’s RPG-like progression mechanic awards health and ammo for defeating bosses but allows players to lose these bonuses by shooting hostages. Logically, don’t kill innocents. Practically, it creates an unwinnable state. Reach the final boss against Big Boss with insufficient explosives—a real possibility if your rank is too low—and the game becomes impossible to complete. Few design choices have stranded more players at the finish line.

Metal Gear 2’s Inherited Problems

Metal Gear 2 introduced improvements moving toward the series’ eventual form: longer codec calls and a basic radar. It also inherited the predecessor’s flaw: one catastrophic design choice. The swamp maze forces Snake to navigate an invisible path through murky swamp for four screens. Stepping off means slowly sinking to death. Walking a basically invisible line on unrefined controls halts momentum entirely. First-time players without a map face an arbitrary wall existing solely to punish exploration.

Metal Gear Solid: Perfection and Failure

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The Shadow Moses Opening

When players recall Metal Gear Solid, they remember famous bosses: Psycho Mantis with control-switching tricks, Sniper Wolf in the snow field. Neither defines the experience. The opening thirty minutes—Snake’s underwater insertion into Shadow Moses Island’s cold docks, the elevator ascent, searchlights on the helipad, footprints in snow—create an incredibly tight stealth sequence that remains iconic. That is Metal Gear Solid.

The Jeep Escape Problem

The ending abandons that clarity. Metal Gear Solid devolves into a boss gauntlet: giant robot, Grey Fox’s death, more robot combat, the revelation that Solid and Liquid are clones, a fistfight atop Metal Gear REX. Then comes the jeep sequence. Snake escapes with either Meryl or Otacon through explosions and turret sections. The controls feel off, the sequence overstays its welcome, and it remains a rare lapse in an otherwise near-perfect game.

Sons of Liberty’s Divisive Protagonist

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty replaces Solid Snake with Raiden as the main protagonist—a bait-and-switch generating debate since 2001. That criticism misses the narrative necessity. Raiden is essential because Sons of Liberty explores identity. It asks whether someone could become Solid Snake and answers: no one should want to. Being an action hero causes damage. Raiden, manipulated through VR training and shaped by trauma, embodies how war and psychological manipulation destroy individuals. He must carry this story; no other character could.

The Big Shell facility demonstrates how strong narrative choices do not guarantee execution. The first half works well—a circular space with shortcuts, alternate routes, hidden conversations, and a bomb-disposal sequence rewarding exploration. After the Harrier fight, the game becomes aggressively linear. Underwater swimming sections frustrate with murky pathfinding. An escort mission with Emma feels awkward. Plot revelations about Otacon arrive without proper setup. The worst stretch in an otherwise strong game follows a promising structure.

Snake Eater: Mastery and Remake Failure

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is widely considered the strongest story in the series. The relationship between Snake and The Boss—mentor, opponent, tragic necessity—ranks as Kojima’s most complex character pairing. She stands among the most interesting women in video games: multifaceted, compelling, genuinely written. The game threads a difficult needle: weaving complex historical fiction grounded in genuine emotion, creating a political thriller that does not collapse under its own weight. The story works, which places the game in rare air for the franchise.

Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, released in 2025, is visually inferior to the original despite modern technical capabilities. The original uses strong oranges and reds from sunlight and fire, creating visual depth. Delta is washed out. Colors feel cooler and flatter. The richness defining the jungle environments has been replaced by a muted palette. The remake plays competently but fails visually.

Guns of the Patriots: Spectacle and Character Collapse

The Mech Battle Triumph

Guns of the Patriots packs an extraordinary amount: globe-spanning campaigns across the Middle East and Europe, a nostalgic return to Shadow Moses, stealth on active battlefields, vehicular sequences. The centerpiece is a mech battle—Raiden pilots Metal Gear REX while Liquid pilots Metal Gear RAY. Unlike tense Metal Gear encounters requiring careful positioning, this fight lets players go all out, channeling Kojima’s action-movie sensibilities into one of the series’ coolest moments.

Johnny’s Misguided Redemption

The game undermines itself with Johnny Sasaki’s character arc. Johnny was originally a bumbling minor character prone to embarrassing moments. In Guns of the Patriots, now called Akiba, he becomes Meryl’s Rat Patrol Team 01 hacker. His value comes from possessing no nanomachines, making him crucial when Liquid controls the global nanomachine system. The game then makes a baffling choice: Johnny becomes Meryl’s love interest. During the finale, amid gunfights, he proposes. She accepts. Meryl’s epilogue centers on marrying the diarrhea man she has zero chemistry with. It is absurd—a misguided trajectory that reduces Meryl to a blushing bride.

Multiplayer’s Undervalued Legacy

The Metal Gear series’ multiplayer modes remain undervalued outside a devoted community. Guns of the Patriots shipped with Metal Gear Online 2, an online multiplayer experience offering something genuinely singular. Peace Walker featured co-operative multiplayer allowing two players to infiltrate bases together, waiting for convoys and striking in unison. This design choice—handheld games with local multiplayer—echoed the PSP gaming promise, shared by Monster Hunter and Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. Peace Walker’s co-op multiplayer is crunchy, satisfying, genuinely fun. The upcoming Master Collection brings this mode back, offering players a second chance at something the Metal Gear series rarely delivers: shared tactical stealth gameplay that actually works.