I've been a fan of the Metro series since 2033 released on the 360, and I've played that game many times. Moved on to Last Light to give it another playthrough, and I'm already having a blast with it, but god does the :so-true: "DAE gommulists are as bad as the nazis" shit really get annoying.
They start off by showing the Nazis to be literal skull measuring concentration camp building monsters, but when it comes to the commies, there is minimal ideological exploration. Supposedly the Red Line follows their ideology and there is plenty of the aesthetic with CCCP flags everywhere and comrade this and that and what not, but nothing of value is really shown beyond the same tired tropes of them being traitorous hypocritical thugs running a police state, and the game spends WAY more time emphasizing them as the main antagonists. The first game dabbled in this but it was way further in the background and there was more plausible deniability that it was just a shitty faction using the name.
The irony is that in the original novels, written by a Russian author, the communists aren't a major faction. Artyom meets a few of them and they have a warm exchange and he gets to learn about some of their theory (he thinks Che is a station). Of course, the game devs are Yoooookrainian, it's just so on the nose. Besides this, I really love these games for their world building, atmosphere, and linear experiences. Hopefully Exodus minimizes this shit, as it is the only game in the series I haven't played yet.
As a fun bonus, here is some concept art of what the Red Line officers were originally going to look like
My favorite part of people doing anti-communism in media is when they completely fail to achieve their task and just leave me sitting there going "these guys seem pretty based actually". Like I don't even give a shit that I get betrayed and tortured, I'm literally working for a paramilitary that seized a massive military base and doesn't seem to in any way be using their resources and manpower to actually help the people of the Metro, I'm totally willing to betray them. The game's standpoint is apparently "it's actually good that a bunch of unaccountable goons are just sitting on a massive stack of weapons".
I'm sure they intended Pavel's stuff about the Metro needing some order to be interpreted as "1984 evil totalitarianism", but like, every other chapter I come across a bunch of people murdered by bandits, and the last game had not one, but three chapters focused on a station that was forced to defend itself from mutants alone (with two of those cases ending up with failure), this "every man for himself" shit sure doesn't seem to be working out.
You really know you're scraping the bottom when you can't even come up with a coherent ideological critique and just go "um, the evil communists decide to use biological weapons... because, uh, they're evil ok".
Flashback to Bioshock Infinite when the leader of the Vox Populi caps a child for literally no fucking reason other than "See? See?!! The lefties are actually the same as the mass murdering racial supremacists!!!" because the dumbass writers couldn't come up with anything better.