Overall, I think this season was probably done slightly better than the last. The expanded field (from 32 to 48 contenders) allowed a lot more variety, and seemed to contribute a certain unpredictability to which bots got matched up in the early rounds. Balancing that out was the selection of some pretty weak designs. Bots like Escape Velocity and Chrome Fly had essentially zero chance against any of the really solid machines that made up most of the field. Even the producers tacitly acknowledged that not all of the picks were worth watching, as they trimmed out several fights in the early stages of the tournament—especially the qualifiers—to save screen time. (Whether they cut the right fights is up for debate. Having seen several of the ones they nixed on YouTube, I recall a few of the aired fights being much, much less interesting than some of what ended up as YouTube-exclusive material.)
Some things didn't change, like the amount of fluff overhead it took to get into and out of a three-minute (or less) fight. They really would do better talking more about the robots and the technology, and dispensing with the celebrity commentators. I heard there were actually technical segments that got cut from the previous season (with Bobak Ferdowsi as technical correspondent), and it's shitty that ABC thinks this show is strictly reality TV. But instead we get theatrics as the teams make a show of pushing their "Ready" buttons, and bad puns from Faruq's introductions.
If they filled the time with more useful content, BattleBots could be truly great. (I know that 8 = "Great" in Trakt parlance, but that's rounded up from 7.77, somewhere between "quite good" and "darn good".)
Review by dgwVIP 10BlockedParent2016-09-26T09:40:51Z
Overall, I think this season was probably done slightly better than the last. The expanded field (from 32 to 48 contenders) allowed a lot more variety, and seemed to contribute a certain unpredictability to which bots got matched up in the early rounds. Balancing that out was the selection of some pretty weak designs. Bots like Escape Velocity and Chrome Fly had essentially zero chance against any of the really solid machines that made up most of the field. Even the producers tacitly acknowledged that not all of the picks were worth watching, as they trimmed out several fights in the early stages of the tournament—especially the qualifiers—to save screen time. (Whether they cut the right fights is up for debate. Having seen several of the ones they nixed on YouTube, I recall a few of the aired fights being much, much less interesting than some of what ended up as YouTube-exclusive material.)
Some things didn't change, like the amount of fluff overhead it took to get into and out of a three-minute (or less) fight. They really would do better talking more about the robots and the technology, and dispensing with the celebrity commentators. I heard there were actually technical segments that got cut from the previous season (with Bobak Ferdowsi as technical correspondent), and it's shitty that ABC thinks this show is strictly reality TV. But instead we get theatrics as the teams make a show of pushing their "Ready" buttons, and bad puns from Faruq's introductions.
If they filled the time with more useful content, BattleBots could be truly great. (I know that 8 = "Great" in Trakt parlance, but that's rounded up from 7.77, somewhere between "quite good" and "darn good".)