Overall I was disappointed in this game. It began with the animation, and the loss of poor Dozer.
In essence Recycle Rush was the polar opposite of Aerial
Assault Assist. Where Aerial Assist was about working with other partners to achieve a goal while also facing off against an opponent doing the same, Recycle Rush is essentially robots playing by themselves next to each other. It's less a competition and more a technology demonstration. The complete lack of interaction between alliances outside of stealing cans within the first few seconds of the games makes the experience very boring. At the low level game it's boring because nobody will be doing much. At the high level game it's boring because the alliances will be doing the same thing each match. You could almost have some teams run autonomous throughout the entirety of the match.
In my opinion a good FRC game needs to have the following characteristics:
1. It needs to provide a compelling technical challenge.
2. The game needs to have multiple roles that require unique solutions, mitigating the likelihood of one robot doing it all.
3. There needs to be a place for a "brave little toaster" robot (ie Dozer) to have a role so that low performing teams can still participate.
4. There needs to be meaningful interaction between the robots so that each match is unique.
5. It needs to be fun and engaging to watch beyond the point at which the novelty expires.
6. The rules need to be clear and easy to understand with a minimum of subjectivity.
Ultimately IMO Recycle Rush only met two of those characteristics, as stacking bins proved to be a very good technical challenge and the rules were easy to understand. However there is no real diversity in roles, low performing teams have no real job save autonomous points, there is no interaction outside stealing cans, and spectators will quickly grow bored as robots do the same thing over and over again. Aerial Assist got 5/6 characteristics (the subjectivity of some fouls was a problem).
Hopefully next year bumpers will be back.