[badlucklottery]

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.

[stavros]

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.

[tombert]

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.

[red-iron-pine]

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.