OK, don't get me wrong, it was good to see robots fighting back on TV again. But there so many things that were a bit shit about it.
Don't like the new arena particularly, the flipper firing at will is irksome, and reminds me of Battlebots, the pit is rubbish when it doesn't have a slow ominous descent (though agree about the idea of having one that can be raised as well), and the arena spike was brought back after 17 years ago when it was decided that it was too hard to be consistently fair with it and it ruined too many matches... so they've brought it back.
The robots were not... particularly impressive. I don't think there's anything I haven't seen before - mostly from America, but some things from the UK. The league system could potentially be unfair, as it could end up giving walkovers to teams based on when they're due to face a robot if something destroys it earlier on. If they want to keep X number in, do it annihilator style with everyone in and one going every 3 minutes.
The house robots added nothing. And why if they have 4 CPZs, do they not travel between them? If you're only going to use 2, in 2 specific corners, paint 2 on. Making them 3 times heavier does not make them improved. Bigger is not always better.
The crowd didn't appear to have much interaction with what was going on, indeed I'm convinced they were using canned laughter at one pont, which is shocking. Dara was shocking to begin with, but did seem to pick up a bit later on, so I'm going to be generous and say maybe as he wandered around the pits, he got to know some of the teams and started to feel a bit more comfortable with bantering.
Angela on the other hand was dull as dishwater, seemed to have no real knowledge or understanding of what was going on, and seemed incredibly teeth and tits. It was like having that horseface Julia Reed back because Phillippa was up the duff again.
Jonathan Pearce seemed to have been toned down, there was no vim and vigour to his commentary, it was just like he was commentating on a fairly average football match.
So yeah... I will keep watching, because the battles were mostly pretty good. I like robots. But I'm not in the least bit encouraged by how they're doing it. There's no... bounce. There's no flow. It basically felt like they thought they were rebooting Techno Games and only realised they'd got the wrong show halfway through planning.
I hope they stop tarnishing my childhood soon
Possibly the first contestant to accelerate with a mic clipped...