Thoughts on Overdrive

[Athleticgirl389]

I thought Overdrive was... entertaining... seeing how I like NASCAR Like all other games, Overdrive had several objectives as people has said already. However, it seemed that a robot could be built to either hurdle the ball or drive around the track; and most of the robots went for the hurdle. Any robot could hurd the ball and kick it under. What disapointed me most, mainly in Atlanta, is most alliances from all divisions in eliminations, being comprised of three hurdling robots.

"Defense" - I saw a few alliances where two would go around and score the ball while one played "defense". I say "defense" because they did stall or stop the opposing alliance. I thought this game's focus was NO defense what so ever - the robots going around the track (ya know, like NASCAR... no one just STOPS on the track and plays defense for their team).

Lap Bots - Not being biased here (since we had a lap bot) but lap bots DID make a great asset to an alliance (like 2016 in Atlanta for Newton). I was thoughly surprised to see so many 3 hurdling robots all over. Sure the main point or w/e was to get the ball over, but there was also another goal just to zip around that track as many times as possible and aid the alliance with points. Face it... 2 balls per alliance and 3 robots... it aint gonna work out.

Autonomous/Hybrid - One of the best parts in my mind. Given the hybrid, teams could somewhat control what the robot was going to do and where it was going to go. Even teams with JUST and autonomous mode did a great job at getting across the lines.

Penalties - I felt that some penalties were called too much and some not enough. I was never a fan of the line penalty from the start. It's really hard to see across the field to see how cloes your robot is to that line. And if you were going around the field and something got in your way, you couldn't continue unless you backed up, sometimes over the line, to continue playing the game. And back to the defense comment... watching down links and being at regionals and Championships, I saw times where a team was playing "defense"... again, that wasn't supposed to be there.


It may seem that I'm complaining about certain teams doing or not doing one thing, and I kind of am. However, Overdrive's purpose was to be offensive and fast paced for all 6 robots on that field. As the game was played, that didn't seem to be the case and defense came back. I was really excited when I saw the kickoff video to hear it would be RoboNASCAR year... it kind of lived up to my expectations because it was mainly fast paced and exciting... just some small things occured that brought it down as a game. If I was to overall rate Overdrive... I'd give it a 6.5 out of 10