Spoilers Coming. Robot Wars returned after 13 years away much to my excitement. Obviously I loved Robot Wars as a child, and then a couple of years ago I watched it all through again (yeah, pretty sad, even for me), and I've watched a few of the old semi's and finals in the last couple of weeks to get myself ready, and now it's here.
I actually liked it, it wasn't the same, which I didn't expect it to be, and probably isn't as good as the old version seemed to me, most likely for 2 reasons, firstly, I don't like change, and secondly, obviously I enjoyed it more as a child and when I re watched it the nostalgia was there for me as I'd seen it many years before, but this was new with only a few memories attached. Despite this issue, and despite the fact I was cautious going in, I genuinely enjoyed it.
The set up then, they have a new arena that seems basically the same except that the pit isn't very deep. They got rid of all the lame latter series house robots like Cassius Chrome (oh dear) and returned to the classics slightly modified, although, not Sgt. Bash!!! What the hell? Yeah, it sucked, but come on.
I was happy with Dara and the other one, no looking down at anyone for what they're doing as had been the case in the early series' of the original, and they looked happy to be there. Johnathon Pearce returned on commentary, which is classic and fine, although he has to get off Match of the Day as he annoys me on that. In the second round of the show now, instead of straight knock out they implement a mini league, which not only gives you more matches but also leaves the chance for comebacks, as was the case on this first show. While on the league system, I like that judges decision wins give you 1 less point than win by KO (is that the right term for it?) as it should encourage a more attacking method and stop any Stinger clones appearing (worst robot ever).
I'm also Happy they told us the turnaround time for repairing robots between battles as I'd always wondered, but now I'm wondering if it was also 2 hours in the original show or if that's new here, and if so, what was it before? they answer one question and I two more straight away. My one issue with the set up, they've extended the show to an hour from 45 minutes, and sure, there's more battles now due to the aforementioned league, but there seems to be more time talking to the people back stage, sure, this was always a vital part of Robot wars so you could figure out who were the arseholes and who were the ones to root for, and now they have previously filmed team trailers for if they make the second round and many, many backstage chats, far too many.
Right then, the event. 3 classics returned, Behemoth, Terrorhurtz and most notably, Razer (I was somewhat disappointed by the very minimal amount of discussion about all 3's past success). So Razer, talk about a let down, sure, it was mostly the new opponent, Kill-E-Cran-E who decided to make their own personal suicide pact with Razer without discussing it with them and took them in to the pit with them while Razer tried to drop them in. At least they had their sausage rolls. Meanwhile in the same battle terrorhurtz advanced after showing the kind of control that you would expect that someone who has been driving one of these things for so long, as well as the 'we're hear to have fun' Nutz, which, btw had mini cluster bots, and if you're to take the rules applied to Gemini many years ago, as soon as one of them is down, you're out, but that rule doesn't seem to apply here. At least get someone to tell me what the rules regarding cluster bots are now, please. Meanwhile in the other fatal 4 way, Behemoth advanced after also showing good control along with the dangerous carbide, that reminded me of Fluffy from the original series with it's sort of spinning sideways hammer type weapon.
You fools Razer. So, on to the group stage, which already has offered more excitement than any Euro 2016 group, after the turn around pulled off by Carbide. After they lost in their opening battle against Terrorhurtz due to it's solid armour, they were very down on their chances of advancing, but they came back to top the group by winning their remaining two bouts. Meanwhile, Nutz unsurprisingly lost all 3 battles, including getting smashed to bits by Carbide. Both returning competitors in Behemoth and Terrorhurtz got a clear win, and a judges decision win to leave them both on 5 points. However, due to the head to head results, where Behemoth had come out victorious, they advanced to the final, although I'm sure they said earlier in the show that they would have to face off to qualify for the final, which sounds like a better idea, but no.
So, the final, The impressively damaging Carbide against the classic Behemoth. Interesting Behemoth fact, apart from their very first appearance in series 2, it never again made it past it's heat in the original series, despite competing in 6 of the 7 series (as well as both series of extreme) and being remember fairly well and making both console videogames, and in fact, being amazingly good on said games. So, could they advance from a heat at last? No. At this point I should say it's where the second round league system loses some of it's appeal as it means that no matter what happens, it will always just be a rematch of something you've already seen just minutes earlier. The final itself was all but over fairly quickly, Carbide got a couple of good hits in, Behemoth seemed to have lost one of it's sets of wheels and then accidentally drove themselves backwards in to the pit when all of a sudden the other wheels started working again. Carbide, the newcomers advanced in a heat with 3 returning robots, while Behemoth continued it's impressive streak of losing in heat finals.
I am not convinced of Carbide's chances in the final though. The weapon did seem dangerous but when it came up against the well armoured Terrorhurtz it struggled to make any more than cosmetic damage. Based on the assumption that if you're making the final you should be of a high standard. I guess we'll have to see how effective it is then.
I know I've written far too much here and I really didn't mean it to be. If I do this every week like I'm currently planing to in my head, then it should be shorter as I wont need to talk about the set up and stuff at the start, I think. Also, Sonic ranking will happen, one of these days.
