First of all I don't think this game should be 'iffy' for 13 year olds. There is no blood, but the battles are epic, so it's mostly the parent's call and based on the kid for that one.
The game is a very high quality game as downloadable games go. It puts you right into an up to 24 person battle complete with tanks, planes, jeeps, transport ships, and air raids you can call in. Like the other battlefield games there are bases to capture across the map, and as you capture bases and kill enemies the opposing team's team life bar thingy decreases. The game has three great island maps: Wake Island, Iwo Jima, and Guadalcanal. There is also an Air Superiority one which is a dogfight and that is a separate option. You may expect with such big maps that you might find yourself far from the main battles and just running across the map trying to get to the battle. That is not the case with Battlefield 1943. When you are choosing where to spawn it shows crossed rifles on the base in question, so you can spawn there and fight. That icon is also sort of like a gps thing you get when you are running around. Another thing that helps you get right into the battle is the squad system. When you join you may join a squad and when you die you can choose a living squad member to respawn next to. To add to the great action, the buildings will blow up or catch fire when it makes sense, just like every other part of the map. No longer will tanks have to carefully weave around trees and fences. In Battlefield 1943 you can barrel them down, or bazooka them down. And say you're driving a tank and someone steps out of a building, shoots a shell at you, and then ducks back into the building. No problem, just blast the wall and it will collapse, revealing the player or killing them. There are three classes, none of which are overpowered. Another thing that makes the battles epic is if you control a base that has a radio dish pillbox you can use it to control a formation of three bombers and do a whole wave of bombs over the battlefield.
Now for the small problems with the game. First of all, I still don't know if it's the game or my wifi but I've been having lag issues on and off. One day it's running fine, then the next morning my guy is running past the same rock three times. The other problem is I hate the controls on the jeeps. On the Playstation 2 X has always been gas, but now somebody decided L1 could be gas and L2 is brakes. This is fine with the tank because if you're using X to speed up you can't use that thumb to aim the turret, but there's no point to it with the jeep. Lastly the tanks are WAAAY overpowered. I know tanks are supposed to dominate a war realistically but I don't think it's fair that these tanks have 360 degree rotating turrets with not only a shell launcher but a machine gun, both of which are controlled by the driver. If another person goes on top, it is virtually unstoppable because I think it takes more than 2 bazooka hits, but I'm not positive because I never get a second one in! The scouts have the ability to plant remotely detonated charges so they should be able to run up and do so while the main gun is reloading but really if they try that the driver-controlled secondary machine gun gets them.