Parent's Guide: Wolfenstein: The New Order - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

Wolfenstein: The New Order is a first person shooter set in an alternate reality post-WW2. With the Nazis having won the war, the game picks up in its version of the swinging 60s, which are a far cry from reality. With a dystopian version of the past, where Nazis rule with an iron fist, it's up to you, playing as BJ Blazcowicz, to team up with the resistance, and get revenge on the nefarious Nazi scientist, General Deathshead.

What follows is a game where you'll have to make use of the weaponry you can find to defeat hordes of Nazi soldiers, while up against some crazy odds. Fighting against an enemy that's outnumbers and outguns you, along with having drastically superior technology (including robotic dogs and robotic soldiers), how you approach each level is mostly up to you - you can choose to go in all guns blazing, or, you can choose to stick closely to the shadows, only taking enemies out when they get too close. However you choose to play it, there's a fantastic range of missions here, with a huge variety of objectives and settings, whether you're squeezing through the interior of a transport plane, manning a one man submarine as you explore some flooded caves, or even heading off to the moon.

In terms of accessibility, though, Wolfenstein is a game best left to experienced first person shooter players. While the game does have tutorials, they're written in such a small font they can be quite hard to read, and there's a distinct lack of prompts in general. There's no on-screen objective marker, there's nothing to tell you that you need to press a button when a Nazi robot dog jumps on top of you, and there's no map or compass on screen (you have to pull up the map by pressing down on the d-pad). Another thing that may catch players out are the game's commanders - special Nazi troops who, should they spot you, will call for a never-ending supply of reinforcements until you find and kill them. And with nothing marking where they are on screen, that can be easier said than done - and potentially frustrating, too.

Wolfenstein is a first person shooter that contains explicit bloody violence, strong language and frontal topless nudity at several points during the game.

Perhaps the strongest content in the game is the violence, which comes thick and fast. The game relies on shock value to tell its story, with the result that stomach churning scenes are a regular occurrence, whether it's a close up of a knife being slowly pulled through a Nazi's throat, or the early scene, where you're trapped in a room with some corpses, who are in the process of having their skin peeled off their back. With blood, guts and gore everywhere you look, this isn't for the weak of heart.

In terms of swearing, the F word and s**t can be heard at several times in the game, while the game doesn't stray away from other controversial topics too. From having your character wake up in the furnace in a concentration camp, to doing hallucinogenic drugs with a Jimi Hendrix inspired character, and showing the lead character having sex with the nurse (you don't see any downstairs bits, but there is topless nudity), this is one for older players.

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: Playstation 4