Every Kiefer Sutherland Game: From 24 to Metal Gear Solid V and Black Ops 4

Kiefer Sutherland has played roles in five video games, and his name shows up on four more where it either does not belong or cannot be confirmed. The real list is short: Jack Bauer in 24: The Game, Sgt. Roebuck in Call of Duty: World at War, Snake in both parts of Metal Gear Solid V, and the cowboy Gideon Jones in a Black Ops 4 Zombies map. Below are all of them in order, from 2006 to 2018, plus a look at the credits that keep getting copied from one database to the next without any basis.

The role everyone remembers is Snake. In 2013 Sutherland replaced David Hayter, who had voiced the character for fifteen years, and Metal Gear fans are still arguing about it. Here is how it happened, date by date. Scores are from Metacritic, reviews from Steam, both as of October 1, 2026. The full table is at the end.

24: The Game, 2006: Jack Bauer on PlayStation 2

Sutherland's first game came out on February 28, 2006, on PS2 only. Sony's Cambridge Studio made it, and it played like an extra season of the show: the story sits between seasons two and three, the cast voiced their characters and lent them their faces, and the music came from Sean Callery, the show's own composer. Sutherland, obviously, is Jack Bauer.

Critics were lukewarm, with a 62 on Metacritic from 53 reviews. The script still got a BAFTA nomination and lost to Psychonauts, which is not bad company. 24: The Game was never sold digitally, so today the PS2 disc is the only way to play it. The official trailer, via IGN, is below.

Call of Duty: World at War, 2008: Sgt. Roebuck and 92% on Steam

In Treyarch's World at War, Sutherland voices Roebuck, the squad leader of the Marine Raiders in the Pacific campaign. Roebuck pulls the player out of captivity on Makin Island, leads him through Peleliu and Okinawa, and narrates the American half of the story between missions. Gary Oldman does the same job as Reznov in the Soviet campaign, so in 2008 one Call of Duty had two Hollywood names in it. Sutherland's voice also turns up in multiplayer, as the announcer for the Marine team.

The game came out on November 11, 2008. On PC it has an 83 from critics, and on Steam 92.4% of 53,000 reviews are positive, the best player score of any game Sutherland is in. Roebuck also appears in the PS2 version, Final Fronts, but we found nothing showing that Sutherland recorded anything specifically for it.

How Sutherland became Snake: GDC, Hayter and June 6, 2013

The story took two and a half months. On March 27, 2013, at GDC, Hideo Kojima showed a Metal Gear Solid V trailer in which Snake spoke with a new voice. Nobody was named. The same day David Hayter, Snake's English voice since 1998, told fans on Twitter that he simply had not been asked. On April 1 he posted a long letter admitting that hearing someone else's voice come out of Snake's throat made him "a little ill".

Sutherland was announced on June 6, 2013, at Konami's pre-E3 show. Kojima's reasoning: he wanted a Snake who acts through small facial movements and tone of voice rather than words, played by someone who could convey the face and voice of a man in his late forties. According to Wikipedia, it was Hollywood producer Avi Arad who suggested Sutherland. Hayter answered the same day that he could not fault Sutherland, "great actor, good man", and that the game would probably still be excellent, "like New Coke!". That joke lands best if you remember Coca-Cola changing its recipe in 1985.

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, 2014: Big Boss and 50 dots on his face

Ground Zeroes hit consoles in March 2014 and PC on December 18 of that year. It is a short prologue to the main game, and it is the first time Sutherland is heard as Big Boss, with his facial performance captured as well. In a February 2014 IGN interview he said he had been working on the role for more than a year, that he had about 50 metal dots on his face with cameras recording every movement, and that by the end of a session he started "sounding like Tom Waits". The Japanese voice, as before, is Akio Otsuka.

On PC Ground Zeroes has an 80, on Steam 84.8% of 18,000 reviews are positive. In 2014 the main complaint was length: the prologue is over quickly. Below is the English opening from Konami's channel, the first minutes with Sutherland's voice.

The Phantom Pain, 2015: a 91 and a Snake who barely talks

The Phantom Pain came out on September 1, 2015, and is the best-reviewed game on Sutherland's list: 91 on PC and 93 on PS4. On Steam 91.8% of 108,000 reviews are positive, and no other game with him has more reviews.

Here Sutherland plays Venom Snake, and the reason Kojima hired him is obvious right away: the hero is silent most of the time. Reviewers, Kotaku among them, counted that against the game. I disagree. A Snake who watches and nods works better in this story than a talkative one, and the ending explains why he is the way he is. But if you came to Metal Gear for long monologues, you are in for a surprise.

Black Ops 4, 2018: Gideon Jones, the Zombies cowboy

Sutherland's most recent game role is tucked inside paid DLC. On December 18, 2018, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 got the Zombies map Dead of the Night: Rhodes Manor in England, 1912, vampires and four heroes. Sutherland voices Gideon Jones, a cowboy from a stage show, alongside Charles Dance, Helena Bonham Carter and Brian Blessed.

Black Ops 4 itself got an 83 on PC. It is not on Steam, only on Battle.net, so it is missing from the reviews chart. The map's intro is on Treyarch's channel.

Games Sutherland gets credited for by mistake

Databases and wikis list him in more games than he actually recorded. We checked every line:

There were also 24 mobile games, 24: Agent Down from 2006 and 24: Special Ops from 2009. Sutherland's voice is not in them, or at least nothing says otherwise.

"I'm not a gamer": what Sutherland says about games

Sutherland never pretended to be a fan. On the day Konami announced him as Snake he said it plainly: "I'm not a gamer." Half a year later he told IGN again that he did not know a lot about games, and in the same breath admitted the face capture blew him away: a technician showed him a clip of Snake on a horse and pointed out that the ears moved and you could see the pulse. Sutherland decided this was how movies would be made soon. Games work that way all the time now.

By Kojima's own account, that was exactly the point: not a voice actor, but a film actor who acts with his face. IGN's conversation about what Sutherland means for MGS V's cutscenes is below.

Every Kiefer Sutherland game: the full table

Scores and reviews

With critics The Phantom Pain is first and 24: The Game is last. Fair enough, though the 24 game earns its 62 more for the story than for the shooting.

Steam players see it differently: World at War from 2008 edges out The Phantom Pain by six tenths of a percent. Zombies and mods have kept that old Call of Duty alive for a long time.

Where to start

We have done this for other names too: every Mick Gordon game, every Guillermo del Toro game, who also worked with Kojima, and every John Carpenter game.

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