Blu-Ray Review: Red Vs. Blue: RVBX 10 Years of Red Vs. Blue (2002 - 2012)

Posted by Retrokaiser On Sunday, February 17, 2013 0 comments


Red Vs. Blue X is a gigantic box set containing the first ten seasons of the video game based show Red Vs. Blue. The first five seasons cover The Blood Gulch Saga which is about two groups of soldiers, one red, one blue whom are out to capture each others flag but the downside to all this is they are all a bunch of idiots. The members of the blue team are: Church (the leader), Tucker (the horny loser who wants the sniper rifle), and Caboose (king of the idiots). On the red team we have: Sarge (the leader and always goes on tangents about old war stories), Simmons (the know-it-all ass kisser), Grif (the lazy orange one), and Lopez (the Spanish speaking robot). Right from the start we get a classic scene of Simmons and Grif asking “why are we here?” while the blue team are in the cliffs spying on them. Sarge calls over Simmons and Grif with excitement and reveals that they have a new vehicle (a warthog). The red team also gets a new recruit (named Doughnut) and as a joke they send him to the blue base to pick up some supplys but really want to see him get shot at. Doughnut makes it over to the blue base with ease as the blue team is bickering with each-other and takes their flag as a fluke. The blues get embarrassed by all this and start firing at Doughnut but lucky for him the reds take advantage and start attacking the blues right back. Caboose finds this to be the perfect time to use the tank that the blues have but he ends up getting it stuck on auto-pilot and ends up killing Church (oh dear). Funny enough Church comes back as a ghost and continues to boss around the other blues. Church and Tucker get desperate trying to get their flag back and call for backup and end up getting a freelancer with a dark secret named Tex. Tex goes out to retrieve the blues flag but ends up getting captured and we then find out that Tex is Church's ex-girlfriend and they go rescue her. They rescue her and get back their flag but that's only the tip of the iceberg. The adventures of our loveable nincompoops just keeps on getting bigger with battling other freelancer, meeting aliens, and time traveling. (Click "Read More" for rest of review).


Seasons six to eight cover the Re-collection Saga which is about a freelancer named Washington and his job is to recover A.I. From other freelancers before enemies get a hold of the technology. Washington then goes to the blue team for help but is completely unaware that what he is about to get himself into. This is when the show takes a very turn of events when Church finds out something huge about himself that changes everything you knew about him.  The ninth and tenth seasons cover the Project Freelancer Saga and it picks up right from the end of season eight with Church trapped in a storage bank searching for Tex. These seasons also show the origin of the freelancers themselves which were absolutely awesome to watch with intense action and great drama but don't expect comedy from these segments.


The shows atmosphere changes from season six onwards as it goes from a straight comedy/ parody (of Halo) into a big grand epic action series with some comedy elements mixed in. This change is not a bad thing at all as the comedy element that drew us all in is still there although there isn't as much but there is enough to satisfy. The action that is introduced is done really well and will draw you deeper into the show making the show a perfect blend of comedy and action.   


The way that this show is filmed is quite clever as it is done using a style known as machinima (using video games to make movies) so it has a very organic feeling as most of the stuff done was used with the video game itself. It also feels like I'm watching something brand new and original that feels like anything but Halo. There is a big change in the way the show is animated from season 8 onwards as they add in new 3D animations that you can't do in the game. This had me worried at first as I thought the show was going to make the show feel very un-natural but they only use this method when they have to use it rather then them just using it just because they can.



One thing that disappointed me about the original season one through five DVDs was that the video quality on the older seasons looked just like the videos were straight from the internet, it wasn't terrible but it just felt a bit awkward. This edition has touched up the picture quality and it looks much much better with less pixelation, full-screened, and sounds clearer and if you want to see what the original DVD versions looked like you can just go into the special features which are straight from those sets and are untouched.


Damn there are a ton of special features in this set. Stuff you will find in this set are, audio commentary, deleted scenes, special episodes, making of and behind the scenes footage, interviews, convention panels, table readings, and bloopers and trying to watch all this takes about a day to watch and by “a day” I quite literally mean it will take twenty-four hours to get though it all. Even though this is marked as a fourteen disc set some include a bonus fifteenth disc titled “Red Vs. Blue Mini-adventures” adding another hour of entertainment to this already colossal set of special features. Finally this set comes with a little booklet with some notes and photos. Some complaints I have are that the special pre-menu intros from the older versions are missing from this release. My other complaint happens on disc 13 (Grifball Volume 2) and that is the audio is terribly out of sync with the video making it very hard to watch. This is very disappointing as I was very excited to see these episodes. Overall this was a very tight collection but is best for fans of the show as the price will stop anybody unfamiliar with the series from purchasing it. All the seasons were released individually but this is the only release where you can obtain all ten seasons on blu-ray (minus season ten as you can buy that as a stand alone release on blu-ray). I really enjoyed this set and I do recommend this set but get some of the single release sets if you are curious about the show before jumping into investing in a set of this price.



Title: Red Vs. Blue: RVBX Ten Years of Red vs. Blue
Director: Burnie Burns, Gavin Free, Matt Hullum
Genre: Comedy, Sci-fi, Machinima/Video Game Movie
Running Time: 18 Hours 42 Minutes
Distributor: Hanabee
Rating: MA15+ (Violence, Strong coarse language)
Price: $149.99
Recommended: Yes

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