Customer Reviews

Red Vs Blue - Season One - The Blood Gulch Chronicles

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

IMPORTANT: I don't know why the sellers think the kind of prices I'm currently seeing for this are reasonable, but as of the time I'm writing this review the cheapest price here is roughly DOUBLE what you would pay at the official Rooster Teeth website for the same DVD. (Rooster Teeth is what they call the group that makes this series.)

The Red vs Blue series is a great deal of fun to watch. Characters constantly throw around funny lines and find their way into absurd-but-amusing situations.

The series is an example of machinima, which refers to playing out a story by using the graphics engine of a video game. In this case they used the popular shooter game Halo. They basically use one character as the camera operator, and have him watch the other characters act out whatever needs to be done. The video is directed to a computer, and they later add recorded voices and edit it all together into coherent scenes.

These DVDs haven't been rated, so I'll try to give you a basic sense of what to expect. Since they use Halo to produce all of the images, you won't see anything worse in terms of violence or gore than you would in a game of Halo (which is rated as appropriate for teenagers by the ESRB). Generally, in fact, you'll see quite a bit less violence since Halo is a game about combat, where the violence is constant, and the characters in Red vs Blue spend most of their time talking to each other. HOWEVER there is a substantial amount of profanity. As they got to later episodes and realized that their fan base was turning out to include people somewhat younger than originally expected they cut back on that somewhat, but it still continues to appear. Also, the characters spend a large part of their time insulting each other in one way or another, if that kind of thing happens to bother you.

If you go to the official Rooster Teeth website, they allow you to download the current season's episodes (as well as some older episodes) in a low resolution format, playable in either Quicktime or Windows Media Player. That will give you plenty of opportunity to watch a few minutes and get a sense of whether you'll enjoy an entire DVD's worth.

Note, however, that there'll actually be a small amount of content from the episodes on the website that's cut when it's all edited together to make a DVD. That's because at the end of each episode it fades to black, and in many the character's keep talking for several more seconds. Each episode is only a few minutes long, and so when they're edited into a movie for the DVD they have to cut the sections where the screen is black in order to avoid disrupting the flow. In some cases they specially made an additional few seconds of "footage" to slip in so that they wouldn't have to cut any jokes, but in other cases they simply cut the last several seconds off of a scene. They never remove anything important this way, but if you're deciding between subscribing on the website to get the high resolution versions as downloads, or waiting to buy the seasonal DVDs, you may very well care about those small snippets that are being lost.

Each DVD also includes a commentary vocal track, a few outtakes, some mock-PSAs (Public Service Announcements), and some small jokes that appear if you click the right series of buttons on your DVD controls.

I think I knew what I was going to see when I started watching this animated feature, but I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't that schlocky. I don't really think of it as a movie, but it deserves that label as much as any other of its type. This type of animation, also called Machinima, is based on an early version of Halo. In essence you are watching a recorded version of staged video game sequences with voiceovers. The game backdrop gives the dialog a place to live. Burnie Burns wrote the script and directed the movie. He also performed one of the voices (the soldier, Church). Although the video game avatars are very stiff (not animated?), as could be expected from this decade-old version of Halo, the dialog is the real star of the show. I plan to watch the other versions available to see how the series evolves. Good show. It's worth watching. In fact, you could almost watch it with your eyes closed and get as much out of it as I did. Enjoy.

By the way, who is picking the tags on these movies? "Human centipede" - whatever that is, I didn't see any. "Nudity" - you've got to be kidding.

p.s. I wish that Bernie was writing for Saturday Night Live. It would then become the hilarious show it used to be. Check him out on Wikipedia.

This has got to be the funniest thing ive seen since we made our own videos here in iraq...most people wouldnt get those anyway they are inside jokes. But wow....i couldnt believe after the few online episodes i saw that they were selling the DVD for as much as they are but for the simple factor i have never laughed for an hour straight in my life ill pay 25 bucks...great buy for halo lovers improv comedy lover and just random laughs all around.

Teenage angst meets video games. I thought it was repetitive, but my teens love it. Cartoon violence, absurdity, and Sartre on a DVD. I'm an old dork, so it doesn't appeal to me.

Making something of nothing, that's what this is about. Not many people think to take a video game they love to okay, write a script and play it all out well enough to make it actually viewable. Brilliant, boys!

I first heard about this from a friend of mine in college. Both being Halo fans he figured I would enjoy it immensely. I have to say this is incredibly inventive! It's almost an entirely new way to think of animation. It's actually called "machinima". This first started off as an internet craze and sure you can see episodes there, but to have it on DVD is just SO much better in my opinion. It's definitely my preferred medium for watching anything. I think most anyone into gaming will find some serious comedic factor in this, but I think it helps a lot more if you've ever done some multiplayer gaming. Namely scenarios like death match or capture the flag. Most people in my generation have some experience with a game called Counterstrike (based off of Half Life) and that's the one I used to play. I didn't do much multiplayer gaming with Halo, but I think having that base knowledge in some form of multiplayer made Red vs. Blue all the more hilarious!

This whole series is recorded "in game" on Halo! One of the most, if not most popular, game released for the Xbox. Basically this takes place on a multiplayer map called "Blood Gulch" and it's loaded with a capture the flag scenario. Here we have the red team versus the blue team, as the title obviously states. Now most people grasp this concept and expect a huge amount of battling and war to ensue. This doesn't happen. Instead this has a script and follows a very interesting notion that what if this was a major scale war! This means you have large military backing to support this silly capture the flag scenario in a box canyon that you can only air lift people out of. It also helps that both sides, for the most part, are completely inept! It's a very silly show that will have people roaring in laughter. It definitely helps if you have a very sarcastic and cynical sense of humor. Also this whole thing isn't very "innocent" for there is a load of harsh language and very adult concepts. Naturally we're talking teenager to college demographic for the most part. Personally, I'll probably always find things like this funny.

We actually have a very interesting array of characters on both teams. However, this being volume one, I can tell they were still in the process of truly developing the characters. Even some of the voices used change over the series as they refined points that made the characters funnier. I've watched all five volumes by now and recently went to revisit this, Caboose's voice, for example, developed into something far sillier and made his character all the better in later episodes. We see a quick shift between Sarge's episode one voice and quickly shifts to the more known Sarge voice in either episode two or three. The only problem I really had with the voice overs is that at times it peaks (makes static) too much. This especially happens whenever someone is yelling. This is probably due more to the fact that they didn't exactly have top notch equipment at their fingertips for this first run. Eventually as the seasons continue the quality gets way better, so if you were greatly troubled by this, it's really only on "Volume 1". I've actually been wondering if it would be a good idea for them to go back and essentially re-dub "Volume 1" with the higher quality equipment and currently used voice tones. Might be a good idea...

Basically this show revolves around very random circumstances and the characters dealing with that generates all the humor. Such as the blue side receives a tank no one is certified to drive. They make general crack jokes related specifically to Halo that the fans will surely get and recognize. Honestly I can't recommend this DVD enough. It's by far one of the funniest things I've ever seen. The only black mark, as I said, is the production quality on the voice over production. If you're a fan of Halo and find nuances in multiplayer scenarios a riot, then this is definitely for you!

Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Its been a long time since I laughed this hard. But it was truely of work of art, everything about it was great. Donut (right) blowing up Church, by accident with the help of Shelea was great.

I've downloaded and scene almost all of the episodes on this DVD , but I must say this is a great collection worth buying , if you like the Halo games . you'll laugth out loud when you watch this .

dumb and a voice over of a video game. really dull. Why would someone waste time watching this? Let alone making it.

One of the funniest internet shows I have seen. Genuinely hilarious and well written. Definitely worth watching, endless laughter will ensue.