Fans recognize Hideo Kojima as the person responsible for making Konami‘s Metal Gear franchise into the juggernaut it is today. Despite the lack of entries, the Metal Gear and Metal Gear Solid franchises continue to captivate fans thanks to Kojima’s delicate approach to including drama and story with high-octane stealth. As such, Kojima’s exit from Konami to form Kojima Productions has become such a surprise for fans and gamers.
When Kojima Productions revealed its first game Death Stranding in 2016, players instantly got hooked. This game served as Kojima’s foray into full-blown development without Konami’s restraints. As a result, Death Stranding had quite a grandiose plot with equally-ambitious gameplay. Which game stands out as the “definitive” Hideo Kojima game?
10 Death Stranding: Tomorrow Is In Your Hands
Players could say that Death Stranding finally allowed Kojima to finally create a game on his own terms. After all, not everyone could be as ambitious as Kojima to set up his own gaming studio to create an AAA-title – and yet, he somehow did. Thanks to this freedom, Kojima can explore different ideas, themes, and concepts in ways that constraints like a publisher (e.g., Konami) wouldn’t allow.
Kojima’s first foray into a non-Konami title may have been confusing, overloaded, or even divisive for fans. However, as the Death Stranding tagline states, “Tomorrow is in your hands.” And the game serves as proof that Kojima has finally become what he really wanted: a director without the limitation of simply just being “The Metal Gear guy.”
9 Metal Gear Solid: Tactical Espionage Action
Fans of stealth-action games consider the entire Metal Gear franchise the forefather of the entire genre. Before 24-year-old Kojima released the first Metal Gear in 1987, games at the time filled players’ screens with over-the-top action. It’s thanks to Kojima’s love for film and Western culture that Metal Gear‘s stealth-action flavor had spawned the genre.
It’s the Metal Gear Solid series that helped Kojima “perfect” this formula and explore more of his creative ideas. Kojima has been able to integrate a cinematic feel to the Solid series outside its stealth-action themes. Despite the age of Solid franchise, fans who followed the series across its titles can see just how Kojima blended his original ideas with trends of the times – all of which work well to create an entertaining story.
8 Death Stranding: Deliveries After The Apocalypse
Others jokingly call Death Stranding a complicated UPS simulator, and this essentially describes Death Stranding‘s premise. In the game’s lore, a cataclysmic event called the Death Stranding released hostile creatures called BTs that now roam the Earth. What’s left of civilization have organized themselves into Knot Cities that formed the United Cities of America.
The game story lets players take on the role of Sam Bridges, a freelance courier who was once part of Bridges, the major courier service post-Death Stranding. In turn, Death Stranding shows Sam’s adventure as a courier when their shipment to Central Knot City soon spirals out of control. Death Stranding‘s plot and premise show just how over-the-top and crazily-symbolic Kojima’s plots can get outside the confines of his staple Metal Gear series.
7 Metal Gear Solid: Bipedal Nuclear Missile Launchers
Fans love Kojima for his complicated narratives interwoven with Hollywood callbacks, references, metaphors, and even various jokes. Interestingly, at its core, each Metal Gear Solid game had Solid Snake stop a Metal Gear from being launched. These war machines are incredibly unique, as their bipedal nature makes them deployable anywhere. However, their true destructive power lies in their nuclear capabilities.
Of course, Snake gets to stop any Metal Gear activated throughout the course of the series. However, before this moment comes are loads of Kojima-signature cutscenes – to the point where fans consider each Metal Gear Solid title an interactive game. Interspersed in every Metal Gear Solid game are conspiracies and interpersonal stories that make the series akin to a military spy-fi thriller.
6 Death Stranding: Every Step Matters
As an open-world title, Death Stranding shines in how Kojima relies on this environment to tell his story. Porter’s role as a courier doesn’t just matter in the plot. Rather, Kojima lets players immerse themselves in the role. In turn, players become couriers in most parts of the game.
However, Death Stranding shines in how it transforms this courier mechanic. Unlike other open-world titles, Death Stranding makes each step matter. As a courier, Porter’s packages tend to be extremely fragile. Players need to balance both their load and the way they travel to their destination. Others complain about how this makes Death Stranding a delivery simulator. However, one can’t deny that this mechanic also made walking in open worlds more engaging.
5 Metal Gear Solid: It’s In The Approach
Thanks to Metal Gear, Kojima essentially fathered the stealth-action genre. For instance, Metal Gear Solid relied on stealth staples such as going into missions with a limited loadout. Moreover, players allow Snake to take down opponents with tranquilizers and hand-to-hand CQC.
Interestingly, Metal Gear Solid‘s stealth-heavy gameplay gets interspersed with unique mechanics. Snake possesses various gadgets that allow him to blend with the environment and he has a cardboard box that aids in stealth and a system that allows him to send downed opponents to a separate base. All these mechanics make Solid an immersive spy-fi stealth game, as Snake feels like a high-tech spec-ops agent.
4 Death Stranding: Multiplayer Has Philosophy
Thanks to the Chiral Network, players become connected in the title’s multiplayer servers to make “adjustments” to the game. What’s interesting is that other players “in-sync” with the player can notice some of these changes – without interacting with other players.
For instance, the Chiral Network allows players to stumble upon lost cargo from other players. Players can also leave equipment, start creating structures, and drop items that others might find useful. Others complain that the lack of interaction between players makes multiplayer a bit irrelevant. However, Death Stranding seems to argue that today’s internet resembles the Chiral Network – where people interact with changes in a system without ever meeting each other.
3 Metal Gear Solid: Expansive Side Content
Unlike Death Stranding, Kojima shines with Metal Gear Solid‘s straightforward side missions. In most open-world Solid games, Snake can tour the game world to take down enemies and even get new recruits. Moreover, The Phantom Pain‘s Forward Operating Base mechanic enables players to access a base defense multiplayer mode.
Thanks to these elements, Metal Gear Solid remains quite a timeless experience even outside the game’s main story. Additionally, the difficulty of various missions allows players to enjoy the game by killing all opponents or even challenging themselves to never kill anyone in a playthrough.
2 Death Stranding: Beyond A Delivery Game
As the name implies, Death Stranding has themes centering on death and loneliness. However, thanks to Kojima’s reputation for creating complex narratives, he now branches out of personal self-expression and instead focuses on spreading a communal message. A lot of players reflect how Death Stranding shows today’s reliance on social structures such as social media and the internet – where some may or may not feel “connections” depending on what they experience.
In Death Stranding, Kojima makes themes of individualism apparent. Despite how multiplayer allow players to set up structures that help others, they remain alone in their journey. And Kojima makes this “individualism” apparent by making players recognize every painstaking step they take in the game’s mechanics. Even with the internet, people fight their own battles alone.
1 Metal Gear Solid: More Than Robots
Thanks to Kojima’s dreams of being a director, fans of Metal Gear Solid know how Kojima tied various themes to games in the series. Despite the complexity of the plot, Kojima’s personal experiences made some symbols and metaphors apparent in the franchise.
Kojima tackles issues regarding family and genetics, the internet, and social media, as well as the trials of creating a hero for others to idolize. Perhaps most prominent is Kojima’s perspectives on anti-war, nuclear weapons, and even freedom. As a result, Kojima created quite a memorable series with a unique message.
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