It's not really "random", there is a coherent story (and a moral to that story) underneath all the weirdness and you'll sometimes forget how crazy it's gotten because your current objective tends to make sense (ex: "defuse the bombs").

But all MGS games are basically playable Kojima manifestos with sci-fi trappings. The actual minute-to-minute gameplay for them is really, really good so even if you don't dig the story they're worth playing.

The previous poster is right that MGS4 does clear a lot of this up. But MGS4 also slams more weirdness and callbacks to the previous games on top of it.

Hmm, interesting, thanks. I played MGS 1 when it came out, multiple times, as I liked it a lot. I don't remember it being so weird, but maybe I didn't pay enough attention to the story.

The first one gets a bit goofy with the evil twin stuff, and the unintentionally funny dialog like "Do you think love can bloom on the battlefield???", but certainly doesn't go nearly as off the rails as the second one.

they're ninja-fantasy stories with Tom Clancy future-war trappings

everything about them makes sense when you think of them as Naruto or Onimusha but with a gun fetish.

I've only completed the first three, but at least in those, the stories get progressively off the rails and weird as they go on, especially MGS2.

It's one of those weird things, because the stories are kind of incomprehensible, but they're compelling in the same way that a soap opera is; while you're watching and playing, the story is very addictive and it doesn't feel that confusing as it's going on. There are even evil twins!

The moment I turn the games off, I kind of start thinking "....what the hell actually happened there?".

They do try and have a moral associated with it (though they do one of my pet peeves and just outright explain the themes they're going for at the end), so it's not completely trivial.

The games are a lot of fun, and they are certainly worth playing through in an emulator or something. I've played through the first MGS three times, and the second one twice, and I thoroughly enjoyed them both times, even rewatching the story unfold.

Just play the games. They're good fun.

> The whole story is just random stuff happening?

Welcome to Metal Gear Solid. Half the fun is creating a coherent narrative out of the sheer number of random postmodern happenings. You should see MGSV. Its entire existence is an attempt to connect the series back to the original excuse plots of the original Metal Gear games from the 80s.