If you haven't played all of the games in the series, there's every chance that some of it will leave you feeling slightly adrift and a bit confused. Heck, even if you've been following every labyrinthine twist and Byzantine turn of the story so far, there's every chance it will leave you pretty confused. That's because with each new game in the series, the story so far has got more elaborate, more complex, and more convoluted, to the extent that trying to make sense of it all is a bit like herding cats. So in case you don't have time to play every game in the series again, here, in time for the next plot-twisting instalment of Kojima-san's epic series, is a brief rundown of what's happened so far in the Metal Gear series

Before we start though, we'd better get one thing out of the way. As if the main storyline isn't confusing enough, there are a number of non-canon Snake-based spin-offs to muddy the water even more. Clearly part of Kojima-san's vision from the start, we can only assume that they amount to some sort of VR training exercises to prepare Snake for his real work. They include the very first sequel, Snake's Revenge (released only in the west), as well as Metal Gear Solid on the Game Boy Color and the Metal Gear Acid games, but Snake has also appeared in a Japanese radio drama and a kid's novel that's based (very loosely) on the original Metal Gear. So you can forget about anything that happened in any of those. It just didn't happen.