Today is February 21, 2022. There aren’t a ton of high profile video game anniversaries that fall on February 21, but the Metal Gear franchise is actually celebrating two anniversaries today, as February 21 was the release date for two of the more recent games in the franchise.
On February 21, 2013, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was released in Japan, having first launched in North America a couple of days earlier on February 19. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was a spin-off of the Metal Gear Solid franchise developed by PlatinumGames, with series creator Hideo Kojima coming up with the idea for the game and what would happen in its story. Chronologically, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is the latest game in the franchise’s storyline, with it taking place in 2018, four years after the events of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, and starring cyborg Raiden in the lead role.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance retains the Metal Gear Solid’s franchise’s campy storytelling, but trades its stealth-based gunplay for an action-oriented sword-fighting approach. With Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance being such a departure from series norms, there are some fans who didn’t embrace it like publisher Konami may have hoped, but it’s carved out a niche of its own, amassing a group of dedicated fans who speak highly of it to this day.
The other big Metal Gear anniversary on February 21 is the Japanese launch of Metal Gear Survive. Whereas Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance earned mostly positive reviews and has been mostly accepted by franchise fans, Metal Gear Survive is a completely different story. Metal Gear Survive earned mostly negative reviews at the time of its release in 2018, with criticism aimed at its survival game mechanics and how far detached it feels to the rest of the Metal Gear franchise.
The negative reaction to Metal Gear Survive can at least partly be blamed on the fact that it was the first Metal Gear Solid game that was made after Hideo Kojima left Konami. Despite the game’s poor reception, though, the Metal Gear Survive anniversary is still significant because it remains the last Metal Gear game released to date. It’s now been a whopping five years since Metal Gear Survive released, and Konami hasn’t revealed any plans to continue the franchise in a meaningful capacity.
While Konami has not said anything about continuing the Metal Gear franchise, there are rumors that a Metal Gear Solid remake is in development. Whether or not that actually comes to pass remains to be seen, however, and it may be best for fans to keep their expectations in check.
