Republic of Folk

Comrades! A colleague has been asked to buy CoD:BlOps for his 14-year-old boy this Xmas, but has expressed concern at the UK age rating (18). Apparently, other CoD games have been rated 15, and my colleague would like to know what makes CoD:BlOps different. He's heard there is a torture scene in it, but also that there are parental controls on the XBox version (which is the platform he would be buying for). I wondered if any comrades here might be able to give him some advice? My colleague is not a gamer himself, and his experience with games is very limited. Any pointers you can give him (via me) would be gratefully received!

Thanks

*MW2 SPOILERS*

CoD: MW2 had a playable level where as an undercover terrorist (you're really a white-hearted, red-blooded, honest-to-goodness American) you walk through an airport with your fellow terrorist buddies who are maiming and murdering innocent travellers who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In your hands is an M249 and you can engage the civilians if you want or just euthanise the screaming/writhing ones, both or just walk by. At the end you have a typical Call of Duty shootout with security services and it ends with your execution, a single bullet through the head just before you extract.

You are warned before this particular mission that it contains objectionable content and if you want to you can skip it without any in-game consequences. Of course nobody who buys MW2 skips it because of the graphic content, but the option is there all the same.

I have no idea if MW2 filters out the content at all on the Xbox 360. By default, our 360 is set to family friendly settings but there is nothing in there to stop me loading up Red Dead Redemption and recreating Ned Kelly's last stand.

Feel free to forward my first paragraph to your friend with the caveat that this content is rated 15. I expect that you can watch a play-through on YouTube. 18, I expect is due to the 'torture' element.

My gut instinct tells me it's not age-appropriate for a 14 year old, but each to his own.

****SPOILERS****

I cant remember back to MW2 but there is ALOT of swaring for one in BO and there are key points in the story that there is couple of pistol execution scenes (point blank headshot jobbie) and the whole story progressing is via memorys (missions) from which are gernerated from being interigation chair electric shocks more swaring etc. I dont know abouut the console version but in the PC version exposions/gunshots etc can remove body parts u can shoot off/blow off somones arm/leg and have the screaming and running about it. IMO its alot more grafic that previous game.

I dont know how the parental controls effect it, but as stands IMO as a 23 I would say its not apropreate for a 14 year old. If somone has a console version and this are diffrent please feel free to correct me i can only give an opinion from the PC version.

Thanks for these comments and pointers, comrades - I've passed them all on to my colleague