All this game really does is have Cyborg "Raiden" chop up MGS2/4 Raiden into chunks and say "OH WE'RE DONE HERE" and then explode any character development he had, the only thing that could have made this game's shitty story okay is if it was a prequel to 4, which was the original plan.

Most of the hype behind this game is not very deep, it's just about the boss fights, you sink into the game and most of what it has going on sucks, the point-to-point gameplay is bad and repetitive, the sub weapons are terrible and none of the codecs are worth interacting with, a first for the series.

What you're getting here really is just the boss fights and the funny one-liners they say in those cutscenes, the story is a shallow mockery of what literally every other game in the series (maybe not 5) does elegantly, by just being way too short and not having any depth to it, you could water the story down to "Raiden kills War capitalists" and all you'd be forgetting is the "dude is killing OKAY" parts that totally disregard the gameplay, and get answered in the story with "well no but i like it anyway xP"
The boss fights aren't very interesting either, it's all style no substance, you're just mashing parries until you enter the "ooo im so tired" phase rinse and repeat, at best sometimes they introduce a gimmicky mechanic.

This is the only spin-off that is in any way canon, unless you count PW as a spin-off, which you shouldn't, and it is by far the WORST falling behind even a game as flawed as 5, it exemplifies how little it takes to have something catch on in the modern times, you just need something really cool that can be consumed in a vacuum, it doesn't matter if it's a bad overall product, everyone will just remember the one cool part.

The damage this does to actual polished up indie titles is catastrophic, you'll see people talking about indie games in development being kind of cool, you look to see what it is and it's a game where you can parry literally everything, that's the only reason why it's "cool", Fucking rubbish.

Play the actual MGS games, (1-PW) they're amazing games with the original trilogy being some of the best games ever made in their genre, if not some of the best games ever.

Same problem as MW2019 but replace every scene that was pointlessly shocking with a scene and/or character that's pointlessly Hollywood-esque, also this game is drastically uglier.
The entire game means nothing anyways because the main bad guy you kill just comes back in a multiplayer season and says "nuh-uh" and everyone is okay with him now.

Multiplayer was tested by a group of white-collar workers to be as boring as possible, I was skipping like a little school-girl every day knowing that this game was dogshit and nobody liked it, and the sequel was received even worse, hope your studio burns down modern IW!

"This game is so well written, a true return to form!" a passerby says, as I watch cartoonishly evil Russian #376 kill another civilian.

"FPS games at their finest" says a lobotomy patient as I play through a scene where you go through with kidnapping a wife and child and threatening to shoot them, and shooting right next to them, which is okay because they're the wife and child of a SUPER-TERRORIST!

"A truly deep story" says an actor from the "Your Mom Hates Dead Space 2" commercial as I watch the game blame a real world incident where Americans were shooting civilians on the Russians.

"Makes you love the franchise all over again" says the voices in my head, as I play through the scene where you play as a little girl doing Dead By Daylight loops around a gigantic cartoonishly evil Russian man who just killed your father and is now coming to kill you.

"oh sick is this the one where it was like the old ones the multiplayer is awesome" says that one guy you played MW2 with back in 2009 who always camped in every room and spammed OMA Noob-tubes, as I finally beat the waterboarding mini-game and am given my reward.

This game is fucking soulless, the old Modern Warfare games had a bit of a unique charm that you'd only get out of old IW, and the newer CoD games at least tried to have something unique going on, but good job guys, you proved that you'll eat this grey awful mush as long as it reminds you of what you had like 15 years ago.

Also the multiplayer is doo-doo buttcheeks, even Vanguard is better because it had the decency to at least give you Ninja as a perk.