Melbourne Supanova 2012

I attended SupaNova Melbourne in Melbourne on the 14th and 15th of April. SupaNova is a pop culture expo, meaning that it has everything and anything there. Some of the highlights for me were meeting some actors as well as playing some unreleased games. But we will get to that shortly. A cool thing about conventions and expos like these is the cosplaying, something that I have never got into myself but some people get really behind this and look awesome.

Walking through the aisles it is next to impossible to not see someone dressed up as a character you know, either from a video game, anime or anything pop culture related really. The amount of effort that most people go through to make an awesome costume really impresses me.

As I was walking around the floor I came across a bunch of consoles and computers set up in it. I decided to check it out. The majority of the games that were being played were released titles just as Halo, LA Noire and Need for Speed: The Run. But set up on four Xbox’s was the new Ghost Recon: Future Solider. I spent a fair bit of time here as I began to really enjoy the game. The game type that was being played was called Guerrilla, a multiplayer wave survival type. The four players were system linked together and needed to survive wave after wave of enemy forces. The match starts off with you needing to take over a location which becomes your HQ, from then on you need to defend that location.

In between waves you have some time to prepare for the next wave.  In this time you could set up defenses such as clay mores and automated turrets if you had survived enough waves to unlock them, as well as resupply your ammo and ordnance. Each wave gains in difficulty, be it the amount of enemies you are up against, how much damages they can take, or the weapons they are using.

If I remember correctly the highest wave that I reached was 36 of 50. This was ridiculously hard. We were not just fighting foot soldiers, snipers and guys with rocket launchers, but armored vehicles and the elements. There was a dust storm blowing  that seriously impaired visibility, lucky there was the option to use thermal vision.

Progressing through the waves will unlock you perks to use. Things such as player controlled missiles (great for taking out vehicles), radar to highlight enemies and much more. These things really help and each player get their own set depending on how many points they have gotten from previous rounds.

This game requires you to play as a squad and not just run in by yourself. You need to heavily rely on cover, which is made easy as you can run from one piece to another simply. Even though the game build that we were playing on was not entirely finished it looked really polished and played awesomely. I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy of this later on.

The booth that I enjoyed my time at most was the Hanabee booth. Hanabee is a distributor for Rooster Teeth and The Guild in Australia and New Zealand, and because of this Joel and Marshall from Rooster Teeth were there doing signings. The booth also sold a range of Rooster Teeth products such as dvd’s, posters and shirts, all worth the purchase. I managed to get a heap of my things signed including my Xbox which I think is pretty awesome.

A large part of conventions and expos like these are panels, I managed to go to a few of them, but my favourite would have to have been the Rooster Teeth one with Joel and Marshall, it was laid back and a lot of people got to ask them questions ranging a lot of things. They spoke about how things were in the beginning with Halo CE, as well as new shows and the upcoming season 10 of Red vs Blue.

Supanova is not just held in Melbourne, in fact it is in 5 other locations around Australia. Below is a list of when are where they are. Hopefully you might be able to attend the one nearest you!

For more details visit the official website here – SUPANOVA