Serious Sam 3: BFE confirmed for October 18 release

By Adam Rosenberg August 23, 2011

serious-sam-3-bfe — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Fans were excited to learn that “Serious” Sam Stone would be returning this year with an all-new adventure, and now there’s a confirmed release date for those fans to pin their hopes to: Serious Sam 3: BFE finally arrives on October 18. Note that this is for the game’s PC release, with downloads available from Steam, Get Games and other online e-tailers. Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 releases are incoming as well, but there’s no confirmed date for those yet.

Publisher Devolver Digital might be best served by holding those console releases back until next year. The holiday season is always a busy one for game releases, and this particular year is chock full of extremely high-profile AAA releases, many of which will include a serious number of hours worth of gameplay. The PC release of Sam will clash with Batman: Arkham City on October 18, with Rage arriving a few weeks earlier and Battlefield 3 virtually guaranteed to dominate sales charts the following week.

The press release notes that Devolver and developer Croteam will be offering some decent exclusives for PC buyers, starting with a 10 percent discount on all purchases made throug hdigital delivery services. Anyone who owns one of Steam’s previous Serious Sam releases will also get an additional 10 percent off for making a purchase there.

In addition, pre-orders come with a bonus in the form of a multiplayer avatar for the (fictitious) Digital Devolver CFO, Fork Parker.Steam will also be offering a pre-order bundle called the “Serious Edition” that packs in a bunch of other extras, including a gold version of the Parker avatar, a timed exclusive DLC weapon, a copy of the game’s soundtrack, a making of video, an art book and, of course, the first two Serious Sam game, which players will be able to gift out to Steam friends it they own them already.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

Previously, Adam worked in the games press as a freelance writer and critic for a range of outlets, including Digital Trends…

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The best developments to get first in Manor Lords

A town in a valley in Manor Lords.

It feels a little bit like cheating in Manor Lords, but the development upgrades you can get can do some powerful things to improve your settlement. However, to balance things out, the development points you need to unlock these enhancements are given out very sparingly. In fact, you won't get even close to the amount needed to unlock everything on the sphere grid. To make matters even more stressful, there's no way to undo a choice you make, so any point spent in error is locked in until you start a new game. There's none that can make your game harder, but if you pick one that offers no benefit to your current settlement or goals, it might as well be a negative in terms of the opportunity cost. For the best experience, here are the developments you should invest in first.
How to get development points
Before you can spend any development points in Manor Lords, you have to earn them. This is a slightly obfuscated system that you may not fully understand if you're not paying close attention, but it does make sense once you know what's going on. Development points are tied to you reaching new settlement levels. You can incrementally grow to a small village, a medium village, a large village, a small town, a medium town, and -- finally -- a large town. Each one requires a larger number of burgage plots and for you to upgrade more of them to higher levels. In any one settlement, you can earn six development points.
Best developments to get first

The development tree is broken down into four segments: farming, trade, gathering, and industry. Here are some of the best ones you can unlock early.
Heavy Plow
No settlement can survive only on hunting and foraging for food. Farming is the only way to make sure your storehouses are well stocked with food, but even a fully staffed farm is painfully slow to harvest. The Heavy Plow upgrade adds a plowing station to your farms so you can make use of an ox to not only make plowing your fields far faster, but also tospeed up transporting your crops to the storehouse.
Charcoal Burning
Preparing for winter is your primary concern for your first year, if not the first two, in Manor Lords. Lack of food is one thing, but if you run out of fuel to keep your population warm, they won't last long. Firewood is your basic form of fuel, but it is very inefficient. This development lets you build a charcoal kiln that gives you two charcoal for every one firewood you feed into it. That will double your potential fuel reserves in a snap.
Deep Mining
All natural resources will eventually run dry. While you can regrow trees and let berries regrow, ore deposits only have so much material for you to mine before they're tapped out. You can break the laws of nature with the Deep Mining development that lets you upgrade any mine into a deep mine that somehow never runs out of ore. This only works on the slightly rare rich deposits, but is still incredibly powerful to have an unending source of ore to build or sell.
Sheepbreeding
Speaking of getting an unending source of materials and money, Sheepbreeding makes something that you would expect to happen, but by default does not, actually occur. If you have a sheep farm, those sheep will be completely uninterested in mating and having more sheep babies. Snag this development to let nature take its course and get yourself an infinite supply of sheep for materials and to trade for quite a high price.
Better Deals
And while you're trading, unlock better deals to keep from getting ripped off. There's a tariff on anything you import in Manor Lords of 10 regional wealth, but this perk waives that annoying fee. Since you never quite know what resources you will have and what you will need to import to build your next structure or upgrade, importing is essential for reaching the late game. The earlier you invest in this, the more you'll save in the long run.