1 defined the genre while 3 perfected it. Both are similar in the constraints snake faces in terms of ammo, rations/health, and kinetic reach. Both impose dire and immediate consequences for essentially any non-plot driven detection. These are truly sneaking games. If you don’t sneak, Snake dies.

The villains in 3 are also worth of note. The best the in the series IMO. A ragtag group of freaks, abused and augmented by the Cold War global military industrial complex. All subtly foreshadowing what Snake himself risks becoming / would become.

Further, none are overpowered or overly supernatural but all are extremely dangerous and ridiculously entertaining. Big points for the cameo of a young Revolver Ocelot.

5 is a game-cinematic masterpiece but it’s almost over-engineered and fuck-all if anyone can make sense of the plot. Also it’s not a sneaking game. It’s more like an open world CIA chaos operation simulator. By the end of things you’re emp’ing tanks, breaking the Geneva convention to kidnap and brainwash POWs, calling in airstrikes, firing MANPADS from horseback, engineering mech exoskeletons, founding our own mercenaries splinter nation in the sea, and Fulton extracting farm animals from active war zones…

4 is technically excellent and the female adversaries are superb but the game is too linear and in the end, ham-fistedly nostalgic.

2 does basically everything wrong - [Sidebar: the opening Verrazano Bridge sequence could almost take the number 1 spot were it a stand alone property] - Raiden is fucking lame, the villains are lame, Metal Gear Ray is weak sauce and and obvious memetic if not also technical downgrade, the Big Shell is stupid, and you can only kill enemies with a sword at the very, VERY end…