#FeralPlays Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition for Mac

Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition is coming to Mac on March 31st, so this week we gave Mac gamers a sneak preview of the game with a pre-release #FeralPlays stream. Join Emmanuel, Cass and myself as we conduct OFFICIAL POLICE BUSINESS on the mean streets of Hong Kong!

Parts one and two of the 2 hour-long stream are on Twitch for the next fortnight, with a highlight reel coming shortly after. Catch the full stream while you can!

#FeralPlays Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition for Mac (Part One)

#FeralPlays Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition for Mac (Part Two)

#BeatFeral at Company of Heroes 2 on the Mac App Store

Recently, the Feral Interactive dev and production team laid down a challenge to fans of Company of Heroes 2 on the Mac App Store: #BeatFeral! We took the battlefield and fought valiantly, but it turns out throwing all your resources into trucks is a lot less tactically viable, you know, tanks and air strikes…

We've hosted a few of these events now, both on Mac and Linux, and we've learned that while we might be pretty good at porting games, we're not always that great at playing them! Still, it's awesome to reach out to the fans on events like these, and there are plenty more to come. Check out the Feral Interactive Multiplayer Calendar for more details, and drop us a line on Twitter or Facebook if you want to get involved!

#FeralPlays XCOM 2 - Highlight Reel

A highlight reel of the #FeralPlays XCOM 2 livestream is now up on the Feral Interactive YouTube channel. Check it out below!

Some of the best bits from our XCOM 2 livestream on Jan 28th, 2016. Can the Feral staff save the world? They aren't humanity's best soldiers, but they're all we got. Starring Emmanuel from QA, Marc "The Blond Guy" from Development, and Tabbs... who does something, we're not totally sure.

Follow Feral Interactive on Facebook and Twitter, and keep an eye on our Twitch channel for more livestreams soon!

#FeralPlays XCOM 2

UPDATE: A highlights reel of this stream is now up on the Feral Interactive YouTube Channel.

At Feral Interactive, we're ramping up for the Mac and Linux release of Firaxis Games' XCOM 2, the eagerly-anticipated follow-up to 2012's XCOM: Enemy Unknown. We're as excited as everyone else is for XCOM 2's release, so we wanted to give our audience a little sneak-peek of what's in store. With Marc/Blonde Guy and I providing support, it was up to Emmanuel to take the helm and run us through a couple of (spoiler-free) missions. 

As always, it was an absolute blast; these events are without a doubt the best part of my job, especially when you've got the Feral Interactive CHAT GANG at your back! Thanks again to everyone who came along and watched, I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. I'm still working on my Buddy Cop movie starring Central and Finn "Junkyard" Hausen.

You can watch the full Twitch archive below (apologies for the audio issues; we're still getting to grips with our streaming setup). The archive will be up for two weeks, with a highlights reel to follow on our YouTube channel.

Note: This archive has now been removed from Twitch, but a highlight reel is now available.

Keep an eye on Twitter and the Feral Interactive news feed for upcoming streams - we've been bitten by the bug and have no intention of stopping anytime soon! For more XCOM 2 content, be sure to check out Firaxis Games' own stream of the PC release.

Lumiere London 2016

This year saw Artichoke bring Lumiere to London. Following highly successful runs in Durham and Derry, the Festival of Light made it's way south, transforming King's Cross and the West End in the process and encouraging people to see the city in a new light.

I only managed a handful of pictures of a fraction of the exhibits, mainly due to crowds, and partly due to my incompetence with night shots. Even on Sunday evening I could hardly get near the phonebox-fishtank at Grosevenor Square. Still, I'm happy with the results and it was well worth the four-hour-long trek around central London to see everything.

The Light of the Spirit, Patrice Warrener (Westminster Abbey)

The Light of the Spirit, Patrice Warrener (Westminster Abbey)

Sanctuary, Sarah Blood (Brown Hart Gardens)

Garden of Light, TILT (Leicester Square)

Les Luminéoles, Porté par le vent (Piccadilly)

Les Luminéoles, Porté par le vent (Piccadilly)

Diver, Ron Haselden (King's Cross)

Diver, Ron Haselden (King's Cross)

Postscript: Seeing the lights at King's Cross also led me to discover Word On The Water, The London Bookbarge - I'd never come across this before. It's a bookshop operating out of a barge sitting on Regent's Canal!

Word On The Water - The London Bookbarge

David Bowie: 1947-2016

Brixton, January 2016.

Feral plays Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor GOTY - Highlight Reel

A bit of festive fun from Feral HQ - this time playing Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor GOTY on Linux! Split into 4 teams of 3, we played through The Bright Lord DLC (some more successful than others), which is included in the GOTY edition.

Apologies for the audio issues on my parts - we may have accidentally disabled the microphones 360 degree pickup feature!

Starring:

Alex, Brad and Dom. You may recognise Dom from the Alien: Isolation stream last month

Jon, Tom R and Cass. Again, Cass featured in the Alien: Isolation stream.

Mary, Emmanuel and Ivo.

Marc, Tom M and me!

Feral plays Alien: Isolation - Highlight Reel!

You may remember that, recently, I played Alien: Isolation live on Twitch for Feral Interactive! Unfortunately, the Twitch archive has now been taken down, but Cass (who took part in the stream with Dom and I), edited together an amazing highlight reel, documenting my failings for the ages. Come watch my colleagues make fun of me while I die a bunch!

Alien: Isolation Livestream for Feral Interactive - Friday 6th November

Update: The Twitch archive for this is no longer available. A highlights reel is now available on YouTube.

Recently, Feral Interactive (my current employers, all thoughts my own etc. etc. etc. etc.) have taken to hosting #BeatFeral events, where we play our games online against our very keen and supportive Mac/Linux community. This is the first time we've dipped our toes into this kind of audience engagement, and the feedback we've had on so far has been fantastic. Prompted by this enthusiasm for multiplayer content, our Social Media Manager got thinking about how we could best utilise our single player games in this manner.

So here's the first result; last Friday I sat down in a darkened meeting room with Dom and Cass from QA, and we played the Crew Expendable DLC for Alien: Isolation, one of our recent releases. Until Friday I'd only clocked a couple of hours with this incredibly tense survival horror game, and it shows. If you're willing to keep count of the deaths, then please drop me a line so I can put a numerical value on how bad I was. I had an absolute blast though; streaming games is something I've wanted to try for a while, and having had a taste it's got me champing at the bit for more, so I'll definitely be doing some streaming from home in the near future.

The Twitch broadcast below will only be up for another fortnight. A highlights reel is being cut together as we speak, and that'll go on YouTube shortly; once that's up, I'll come back and amend this post accordingly. For now though, enjoy the stream, and be sure to follow @feralgames on Twitter (FeralInteractive on Twitch) to keep in the loop for future #BeatFeral events!

Note: Twitch archive no longer available. See this blog post for the highlights reel!

Recipe: Ruby Jack's Sausage Casserole

It's no secret that Walthamstow is great for food. It's home to a number of great pubs and restaurants, with Walthamstow Village at the heart of this vibrant food and drink scene. Eat17, Orford Saloon Tapas Bar, The Chequers and the Village are all great places to spend an evening, but this is well worn territory that is known to everyone across E17. It's not really a secret anymore.

What I've wanted to try lately is to actually explore the food scene in terms of local produce, and have a stab at creating dishes that are my own little piece of Walthamstow. With that in my mind, I head out today to the East London Sausage Company on Orford Road to pick up 6 juicy pork and leek sausages (a steal at £3.78), before nipping over the road to possibly the greatest SPAR in the United Kingdom, which is something you don't get to say very often. It deserves the praise though; it's owned by Eat17 and stocks a host of delights from their kitchen, along with other local produce that you simply won't find in Sainsbury's.

It also has an in-store pizzeria so... yeah. 'Nuff said. 

What this SPAR also stocks are ales and beers from Walthamstow's own Wild Card Brewery. I've been a fan of Wild Card since I moved here last year, and am particularly fond of the Jack of Clubs Ruby Ale. I've wanted to use it in my cooking for a while, so with winter just around the corner it seemed the perfect time to try out an E17-inspired casserole for those cosy evenings in. This goes great with fresh, crusty bread, of which there's plenty in the Orford Road SPAR, but this time I went for a baguette from Le Moulin, who have a stall at Walthamstow Farmers' Market every Sunday.

Ruby Jack's Sausage Casserole

Serves 2-3 (it can stretch to 4, but the portions will be on the small side)

6 quality pork sausages, courtesy of the East London Sausage Company (I used pork & leek, but anything with lots of herbs is also a winner)

1 large onion, diced into chunks

2 cloves garlic, chopped

A handful of closed-cup mushrooms, roughly torn

330ml Jack of Clubs Ruby Ale, courtesy of Wild Card Brewery 

400g tin chopped tomatoes

400g tin butter beans, drained

2 tsp paprika (or more because paprika rules)

Salt and pepper

Fresh, crusty bread to serve

1. First, heat a little oil in a large saucepan and add the sausages whole. Fry on a medium heat until nicely browned all over (don't worry too much about cooking them through - they'll cook in the sauce later)
2. Using some tongs or a fork, remove the sausages and set aside for now. Add the onion and garlic and cook for five minutes until golden (there should be plenty of fat from the sausages, but feel free to add a little more oil if necessary.
3. Add the mushrooms and cook for a few minutes until brown and squishy.
4. Add the paprika. Turn up the heat and cook for another minute, stirring frequently.
5. Add the sausages back to the pan, and tip in the Jack of Clubs ale (yep, the whole bottle! sob!). Bring to the boil and allow the alcohol to cook off (about five minutes), stirring occasionally. A good way to judge this is how much 'head' you've got on your casserole. You'll find a lot of beery foam gathering on the surface to begin with, but as the alcohol cooks off, you'll notice less and less foam gathering after each stir.
6. Add the tomatoes, stir well and turn down the heat. Bring the casserole to a gentle simmer before putting the lid on the pan. Leave it simmering for at least 30 minutes, stirring occasionally (the longer the better; I'll usually leave it on a low heat for at least an hour). Pre-heat the oven to 150 degrees.
7. 10 minutes before serving, drain the butter beans and add to the casserole, stirring well. Give it a try and season to taste before putting the bread in the oven.
8. Divide into bowls and serve! Be sure to put the bread out last so it's still warm and crusty as it hits the table.
9. Eat! Preferably with way too much butter on the bread.

www.jamestabbinor.com are GO

The wait is finally over for literally handfuls of people; jamestabbinor.com is now live.

Content's a little threadbare right now, but more writing will come from further collaboration with Walthamstow Weekender, and I'll use this blog to test the waters on some ideas I've had kicking around. Expect a lot more photography as I scurry around London (and further afield) being a little too snap-happy and giving off those "way too keen" vibes. You know the sort. The kind that comes back from a short city break with over 1000 photos. And you have to look through them all. Yeah, I'm that guy, unfortunately.

Those of you who know me well will know I'm also way too into video games, and as I experiment more with Twine, Unity and GameMaker, I may end up putting some of those experiments up here for people to play with.

And hey, if you don't know me too well, then follow me on Twitter or something (@jamestabbinor) and let me know what you think of my work!