Metal Gear Survive

Metal Gear Survive from 2018 is the first entry in the series made after Hideo Kojima and his studio Kojima Productions left Konami, and that fact alone makes it an unusual chapter within the series. The story picks up after the ending of Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes – following the attack on Mother Base, the surviving soldiers are pulled through a wormhole into a parallel dimensional world infested with crystalline creatures called Wanderers, resembling zombies. Instead of espionage-based stealth, the game builds on survival, resource gathering, and defending a makeshift base, all while a world shrouded in poisonous red mist storms forces the player to venture out only with an oxygen mask.

The core of the game is crafting and fortification: the player builds fences, towers, and traps to defend the base against waves of enemies, while also having to manage hunger, thirst, and the condition of equipment that gradually wears down in combat. A tamed dog named Buddy helps during exploration, able to sniff out resources and warn of danger. Besides the solo campaign, Survive offers a four-player cooperative mode called Rescue, in which teams jointly defend an installation and evacuate hostages. Visually, the game recycles the engine foundation of Metal Gear Solid V, but mechanically it's an entirely different genre built around defensive waves, crafting, and resource management rather than sneaking between patrols, and the game also features an in-game currency sold for real money to speed up progress. Weapons and tools wear out and need to be regularly repaired at the workbench back at the base, which forces the player to keep venturing out for more resources instead of comfortably stockpiling supplies.

Precisely because Survive strayed so far from the series' stealth foundations and built instead on base defense and the fight for survival, it remains a one-off experiment within the series to this day – no other entry has attempted a similar approach before or since.

Why play: Survive is worth it for players who enjoy crafting and base defense in co-op with friends and want to see how the Metal Gear brand fares outside the stealth genre. Fans of classic sneaking and Kojima's authorial signature, however, will find more to love in the other entries in the series.