Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles DVD box
"Camping. It's a legitimate strategy."
If you're a fan of Red vs. Blue, that quote may well have you in tears.
For those who don't know about this series of short films, here's a quick synopsis: Created by Austin, Texas-based Rooster Teeth Productions, it's a series of short computer animated films crafted using the Halo games as rendering platforms-a video art form known as machinima. Actors give voice to avatars within the game that are manipulated like puppets. It's a little more technically involved than that, but you get the idea.
Red vs. Blue is probably the best known example of machinima. It's extraordinarily popular. Millions have watched. Episodes are available for download through Xbox Live. The series has won several awards from the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences. A couple of the show's cast members even performed a little skit in Halo 3.
And now there's a new $50, six-disc DVD boxed set of the first five seasons-all 100 episodes of The Blood Gulch Chronicles storyline, for those who follow the series-set to release in Canada this Tuesday through E1 Entertainment.
I've spent the last few days reviewing these classic episodes, and I found myself laughing aloud all over again as I watched newly-made cyborg soldier Simmons receive a fax through his posterior, private Donut being sent to the enemy's base in search of "headlight fluid," and the ghosts of Church and Tex possess and explore the labyrinthine mind of clueless rookie Caboose, whose internal representations of his comrades are hilariously inaccurate.
You can see the very first episode below. Viewer discretion is advised (there's some strong language).
The acting is generally pretty far from Hollywood quality, but the writing is good. There are a few in-jokes for Halo fans, but people who've never played the games can laugh equally hard at gags involving a sentient tank expressing love for a robot and a soldier who can't understand why everyone thinks his "light-reddish" armour is pink.
Fans will remember that the plot sagged a little in the third season as the creators switched from using Halo to Halo 2 (it seemed as though they were trying to come up with more physical gags rather than focusing on the dialogue), but it regains its stride for the final two seasons, which introduce some excellent plot lines-such as Blue team soldier Tucker (a guy) becoming impregnated and giving birth to an alien abomination he calls Junior-as well as some hilarious new supporting characters, like Sister, the sibling of a Red team soldier who accidentally joined the Blue team because she's colour blind.
The $50 set also features loads of bonus features, including trailers, deleted scenes, many of Rooster Teeth's amusing "PSAs", and a couple of short series that run parallel to the main series.
What's more Rooster Teeth has thoughtfully re-filmed the first four seasons in widescreen and at a much higher resolution by using the Halo games for PC, and the upgrade in quality is excellent. These episodes now feel as though they were made for today's giant flat panel HD sets.
I wondered whether I'd be able to get back into this series after so long (I stopped watching shortly after The Blood Gulch Chronicles concluded-Rooster Teeth switched up the scenery and characters in its subsequent series, giving me a chance to break my habit), but it only took a few episodes for me to be charmed all over again by Sarge, Donut, Church, and the rest of the Red and Blue crews.
In the still-burgeoning world of films made using game engines, Red vs. Blue is a seminal classic, and this remastered boxed set is undoubtedly the best way to watch it.
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