In all the Game Night excitement, I forgot series three of Robot Wars started last night. Is it worth catching up on?
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In all the Game Night excitement, I forgot series three of Robot Wars started last night. Is it worth catching up on?
This is my Crystal Maze. I *loved* Robot Wars as a child and this reboot has been dreadfully disappointing. I think someone did the maths and it’s something like 20 min of fights and 40 min of waffle.
There’s a new format!
So. Here’s the episode format.
Round 1: 2 Group Battles, each with 3 robots. The winner of each group battle heads to the episode Semifinals.
The losers of the group battle do a head to head in the ‘Robot Redemption’, 1 v 1 battles.
Then you have semi finals, with the winners of the Robot Redemptions and the 2 group winners.
Then you have the 3rd place play-off, losers of the semi finals, for reasons I’ll explain later.
Then the final. The winner automatically goes through to the ep6 finals.
The 2nd place and 3rd place qualify for the ep6 ’10 way battle’, which will decide who the wildcard for the ep6 finals are, rather than the judges.
I *think* that’s right. I’m a bit confused. However – it felt good for the number of fights. Better than the round robin, decent fights in there and some interesting bot ideas. I mean I’d still be happy if they did more.
They also made a few production tweaks too – Dara and Angela do a bit more in the arena, it’s not full ‘Craig Charles gladiatorial’ but it feels a bit more energetic. I don’t know how much they’ll be noticed but hey what’s this place if not for noticing bits like that. Decent polish though, possibly a series late but they did do 2 and 3 in quite quick succession.
Aha I found a clearer writeup of the format, I got it right: http://www.robotwars.tv/the-show/ I think that’s 7 fights in the episode?
Crikey, that manages to be fewer than previous, whilst providing endless repecharges so nobody ever gets eliminated.
Will watch this evening, thanks.
Ha yes it does feel like that a bit. It makes Only Connect feel logical. One of the benefits is that it does mean all the fights are unique – so the heat final isn’t just a repeat of one of the head to heads. At least in this one, it didn’t feel like ‘robots were just struggling to compete’ crawling to the end of the episode like in the previous format – though there were a few that broke down.
900,000 (3.9%) overnight for this, apparently. Will probably add another half mill on catch-up on previous form.
Edit: From Broadcast “The third series of Mentorn’s battle format could not match the 1.2m (5.5%) who watched the second series launch in March. The six-parter was also shy of the 1.6m (7.4%) slot average.”
Think this may have clashed with a high rated F1 race also.
It is mildly annoying that they shown which robots are in the 10-way through the trailer though. You knew what robot had won the 3rd place play-off before it had started…
Nice to see the trademark ‘arena falling to bits’ is still present. The fog penalty isn’t great, the competitors can’t see what is going on…but that means neither can JP or the audience at home!
Here’s a random find. An episode of cbbc gameshow best of friends. Loved it as a kid and it still holds up today. One thing I noticed when watching it was the presenters did ask the kids if their decision was the right one. Didn’t notice it as a kid but it was quite mature and treated the kids as adults. With bbc reviving all their old shows, I could see this one making a comeback, especially now in the era of facebook friends.
Credit where it’s due, I enjoyed that more than I have previous – felt like it had a little bit of life in it. Better choice of music, better use of hosts, better use of lighting. That it’s managed this with one *fewer* battle in each show and more waffle is surprising. The ten-robot battle royale feels like a really strong idea.
Agree the Fog of War is not that great.
Look out for everybody folding their arms in slow-motion, this year’s big introduction shot of choice.
Mainly I quite enjoyed the bullshit clusterbots going flying, like a metallic version of Cannonball.
I’m finding myself enjoying this more this series – they actually seem to show quite a lot of the battles rather than chopping them down in the editing suite. I still skip all the filler though, so it is slightly annoying how they no longer introduce ‘FROM NORWICH…SAL…err…SABRETOOTH!’ with a quick summary of the robot capabilities just before the first fights.
Bonus points this week for introducing the new regular feature of ‘Noel Sharkey pressing the 10 second countdown button’
Ha! Yes. I wondered previously if battles that got very little screen time were just irritatingly edited (I actually don’t think it helps that the countdown is the same clock in the same font as the battle timer), but now we see there’s a very clear immobilization countdown button.
Some great battles last night as well, and some great clashes.
Angela Scanlon still feels like a much better fit for this than Dara.
This really isn’t doing well, 690k (2.8%) last night.
I think the show’s moving in a better direction this time round as well. Pity.
It is up against Blue Planet, so I wonder if the BBC will be factoring in catch up figures.
Tonight’s episode was probably one of the best ever in the entire history of Robot Wars – and finally a final that wasn’t a bit of a damp squib!
The fog of war still does itself no favors however, especially when it keeps activating when trying to watch 10 robots battle it out! It was nice of one team to invent #mobilefogofwarmachine however…
I’ve really enjoyed this series, having not expected to. Don’t understand why the grand final isn’t a fight to the death though.
Did you see that terrible edit involving the tyre wall. It lit up pit but rogue house robot occured then magically in the next frame the tyre wall now has adjusted to rogue house robot setting.