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i know COD WAW is one of them where it has the best portrayal of the soviets, but the other COD games where you also get to play as the soviets/red army soldier like in the original COD (COD 2003) and in COD 2 - are they just as good? or at least, not as problematic as with the newer cod games?
because i refuse to play any game that's just pure crystallized american state propaganda and talks shit about the USSR. fuck off with that shit.
What you are looking for is Call of Duty: World at War. You have two campaigns, one being American and focused on the Pacific, and the second being Soviet and focused on the Eastern Front.
From what I remember, there is very little, if any, historical revisionism or state department propaganda, so you won't run into something along the lines of the Soviets randomly committing war crimes to show how "barbaric" they are or other garbage similar to that. The American campaign also doesn't just hype America up to be this unstoppable war machine that was single-handedly responsible for winning WW2.
Every so often I'll go back and replay the game due to how incredibly cathartic they make mowing down droves of Nazis. Storming the Reichstag is definitely my favorite part by far from both campaigns. Just watching the Nazi Eagle get hit with a rocket before tumbling down from the rafters and crushing the SS men taking cover behind Hitler's podium is amazing. Not to mention the ending scene itself.
Well, there is still a little bit of "Soviet barbarism" where they have either the player or Soviet NPCs kill surrending Germans, but at least the message is more along the lines of "war is brutal" rather then "Russia/communism bad".
True, but that's not displayed as inherent to the Soviets or even unreasonable to a degree. The German brutality is talked about and displayed frequently, and the actions of the Soviets are displayed as a righteous anger in response to an invasion and suffering at the hands of an incredibly evil enemy. War is hell, and I feel that the game demonstrated the brutality of the conflict well. The US and Japan also shown engaging in that same brutality in the Pacific Campaign, so its not something unique to the Soviet missions.
Even then, moments like the one you talk about are rare, and preceded by a lot of context. For example, the scene where the group of SS soldiers attempt to surrender and you have the option to burn or shoot them, comes directly after an entire mission of that SS unit fighting savagely and repeatedly killing captured or surrendered Soviet troops, and then only surrendering because they attempted to escape into the metro system but were cut off and surrounded.
Or even the scene at the beginning of "Their land, their blood", where Rheznov gives you the option of shooting the Germans bleeding out on the floor, comes after those same Germans beat you, a captured soldier, senseless, and were preparing to execute you. Which they were only prevented in doing because of the Red Army's arrival.