Red Vs Blue Season 11   Starring (voice): Shannon McCormick, Joel Heyman, Matt Hullem and Geoff Ramsey Distributor: Animatsu RRP: £12.99 MANG5700 Certificate: 15 Release Date: 29 June 2015

OK, so it’s best to say from the get go that having just sat through season eleven of Red Vs Blue (2013), I just don’t get it. Comedy is very subjective, for instance I think Family Guy is a work of genius and South Park is an inane bore.

If you have not come across the web show before it’s the bastard son of Halo, telling the tale of two inept squads of soldiers, who spend most of their time acting like incompetent children. It sounds like a good recipe for a show and considering that this is season eleven, there is obviously an audience out there who enjoy it. There is another small point here, in that oddly enough season eleven is the first to be released this side of the pond, so if you’re not a fan of the web show, this seems an odd place to ask your audience to start from.

This season opens with the two squads being marooned on an alien planet, you get the feeling that one or both hold some responsibility for their ship's crash. Straight away they are drawn into conflict with each other over how the camp should be set up and who is in charge. As it turns out they are not alone on the planet and are forced into their worst nightmare, the idea of cooperating with each other.

If you willing to work at it, the season gradually starts to make some sense regarding the relationship, both between the two squads and within the main characters, although this is made a little more difficult as they all wear helmets, so all the nuances have to be handled by the dialogue. This also means that the writing has to be razor sharp. You don’t particularly have had to play Halo to get the jokes and I didn’t notice anything which was incomprehensible for non-players.

There are nineteen episode in all ranging from around four minutes to nine minutes in length, the jokes come thick and fast and if you enjoy the humour then I’m sure that there is much to enjoy here.

Where the collection does shine is in the extras, given the limited running time of the actual show has allowed the makers to include a commentary as well as more shorts, either directly connected to the show or other media created by Rooster Teeth.

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Charles Packer