Stuff to play, stuff to see, here comes Watch This, Play This. Confused? Read this.

Last October, Blizzard announced their newest World of Warcraft expansion, The Mists of Pandaria. One of the major selling points for the expansion is a new player character race: panda-bear people called Pandaren.

And yet in the five months until now, all screenshots and trailers featuring the Pandaren have shown exclusively male characters. Today, Blizzard made a point of publicly revealing the female version of the playable panda.

While the lady panda still has many bear-like attributes, she is, very clearly and most importantly, defined as a visible she, with styled hair and an hourglass figure. Her male counterpart has an overall much more spherical, bear-like shape.

No official release date has yet been provided for The Mists of Pandaria expansion.

Female Pandaren Revealed [World of Warcraft blog]

Last October, Blizzard announced their newest World of Warcraft expansion, The Mists of Pandaria. One of the major selling points for the expansion is a new player character race: panda-bear people called Pandaren.

And yet in the five months until now, all screenshots and trailers featuring the Pandaren have shown exclusively male characters. Today, Blizzard made a point of publicly revealing the female version of the playable panda.

While the lady panda still has many bear-like attributes, she is, very clearly and most importantly, defined as a visible she, with styled hair and an hourglass figure. Her male counterpart has an overall much more spherical, bear-like shape.

No official release date has yet been provided for The Mists of Pandaria expansion.

Female Pandaren Revealed [World of Warcraft blog]

When you think about it, the Angry Birds are like the collectible guns of a first-person shooter. Once you unlock them, each type does something different. So, if the titular avians of Rovio's ubiquitous mobile hit are weapons in their own war, the upcoming Angry Birds Space will be increasing their arsenal with a few all-new squawkers.

Seen in the video above, the freshly revealed Ice Bird's the newest kind of feathered fury coming to ABS. I fell off the Angry Birds bandwagon when a firmware update wiped all my old save data, but the idea of experimenting with new mechanics like this might be enough to draw me back in the new game.

In today's 88 percent durable edition of Speak Up on Kotaku, commenter Deuxhero wonders why game developers continue to include breakable weapons in their adventure games long after the novelty has worn off.

So what's the deal with breakable weapons?

Some games do it right, and they generally fall into two camps.

One is the "heat" system where weapon degradation is not a long term effect, but the opposite, measuring how much stress you are putting on your weapon. This actually serves a gameplay purpose in punishing spamming of attacks or blocking. Examples of this include Summon Night: Swordcraft Story, where your weapon has a durability gauge that refills after every fight (the first only, though the implementation in the 2nd, as a second HP bar with dedicated restoration items, is bearable. Both also get points for making breaking weapons a viable strategy against human foes, teaching you how to make their weapon if you pull it off.) and the Way of the Samurai series' "heat bar" which fills as you attack and block but falls quickly as you don't do anything.

Two is the domain of Fire Emblem and little else. Here the weapons have finite, defined (Like "25") uses and are part of resource management, both of money, inventory space, and when you do your shopping (as in most titles you don't always have a shop on a map and often go long stretches without one) for common weapons, and rationing out the few uses for special ones, such as the anti-armor Knight weapons or the rare early game high-quality goods. Repairs here are skipped entirely; what is broke is broke. Examples include the Fire Emblem series (4 excluded, though the high cost of repairs keeps in here), and to a lesser degree, unmodded STALKER and Daggerfall (mundane equipment can be repaired, but in the unmodded game, magic can't— it heals over time, and even that takes weeks).

Most of the time however, it is just an excuse to make the player run back to town and pay a small fee (or invest in an otherwise useless skill). For all the claims "x is outdated" (despite giving no logical reason for the claim and failing to demonstrate they aren't fun, but that's another time.), I have never seen something that has been kept around like item maintenance (except perhaps item IDing outside of Roguelikes) simply because it was in older games.

Also, two really bad uses worth noting.

Arcanum had the idea to make item damage non-existent outside of semi-rare enemies and critical misses. Sadly this just meant melee types were screwed, while the already overpowered magic and throwing weapons were unaffected, and that a critical miss was a guaranteed reload as your weapon's durability was permanently lowered after repairs.

3.X Dungeons and Dragons only damages weapons when someone is attempting to break them, but this results in no one using the sunder option because it is a dick move to PCs as the DM, and robs you of something you could use or sell as a player. (Also the horrible idea of fumble house rules, which punish a melee type for level up as he has more chances to roll a 1).

The developer posted on Facebook today to say it is "collecting and considering" fan feedback about the controversial ending. BioWare did not mention whether it will be going to the FTC to complain about its fans. [Facebook]

On Monday, the early bird gets the alien. Or something like that. No matter what time you wake up, you can still enjoy the talk in Kotaku's official forum, known affectionately as Talk Amongst Yourselves. This is the place where we gather on a daily basis to discuss all things video game and existential. Want to talk about new games, old games, game where you fight multi-eyed aliens? Knock yourselves out!

I seem to remember that the world-dooming alien invasion in the Resistance games started in Russia. So this TAYpic by pan1da7 that pits one of the Hunters as a human freedome fighter might even be canon. What do you say, Insomniac?

You can do funny things with pictures, right? Want everyone on this fine web forum to see? Here's what you do. Post your masterpieces in the #TAYpics thread. Don't forget to keep your image in a 16x9 ratio if you want a slice of Talk Amongst Yourselves glory. Grab the base image here. The best ones will be featured in future installments of Talk Amongst Yourselves. Get cracking!

Kid Icarus: Uprising is Nintendo's big 3DS game of early 2012. Hyped since the early days of the 3DS as one of the major titles for the system, we've now been able to play the finished game.

It's fun. It's weird. No, it's very weird. We're not ready to review it just yet. We want to give the game some time to marinate and we want to be able to talk to you about the game in its entirety when we've had enough time with all its modes.

But we've got to tell you something. So here we are. Me and Kirk Hamilton, who will be reviewing the game. He and I played some multiplayer online against each other on Sunday afternoon. And then we jumped on IM and chatted about the game.

Here's what we had to say about one of the strangest and most interesting Nintendo games in a long time...

Kirk Hamilton, future reviewer of Kid Icarus: Uprising: Okay! Let's talk about Kid Icarus Uprising. There is a lot to get to.

Stephen Totilo, occasional player of Kid Icarus: Uprising over the last year.: Yes. let's go. Kirk, this game is insane.

Kirk: I hear you. The menus alone are enough to make a guy dizzy. I skipped the tutorial and got straight into the game, which I think may have been a mistake.

Stephen: Menus? We can't even talk about all the menus. Nintendo sent us both copies, but, remember, some of the menus—the menus!—are supposed to be secret until release day.

Kirk: Oh, sorry! Yes, let's keep things by-the-book. Only approved menus will be discussed here.

Stephen: The tutorial is great. Because it's full of jokes!

Kirk: The whole GAME is full of jokes. So many jokes! Whoever wrote this had a whole lot of fun.

Stephen: Right. I wasn't expecting a comedy. But it's funny. Did you find the spa scene?

Kirk: I found a hot springs...

Stephen: I think that's the one. Where Pit is mocked for jumping into the hot springs fully-clothed.

Kirk: Yes! There's this weird sexual tension between him and Lady Palutena.

Stephen: Yeah! This is such a surprising Nintendo game in so many ways.

Kirk: Yeah, the writing is really unlike anything I've seen in a Nintendo game before.

Stephen: I was thinking back when I was playing Metroid: Other M that if THAT was how Nintendo was going to do voice-acting, I didn't want them to do it. But this is sooo much better. Tons of voice, all hilarious.

Kirk: It's interesting how there are no cutscenes either—they just exposit super-fast while you're actually playing the game.

Kirk: It keeps things moving along, though it can be a bit chaotic at times.

Stephen: I agree. So I have to say that this game is a textbook example of a game seeming really different once I play it on my own time.

Kirk: How do you mean?

Stephen: I played it a few times over the past year-plus at Nintendo events. And while I got the basics — an airborne shooter that turns into a ground-based brawler-shooter in level after level, I didn't really appreciate that it is meant to be played more like, well… Smash Bros.. Like it's a total arcade game that's all about mixing and matching powers and abilities and unlocking tons of gear. And prizes.

Kirk: Yeah, I see what you mean. Playing it at that hands-on I did earlier this year was similar—I had all these questions about the particulars of how everything works, but you can't get your head around that until you spend a good amount of time actually doing it. It's the kind of game that lives and breathes in the insane amount of collectibles and unlocks.

Stephen: And yet it still has some of the weirdest controls ever. And Nintendo has made them even weirder by including that ridiculous stand. That thing is useless. Totally unnecessary.

Kirk: I do not understand it. I've seen plenty of commenters who are looking forward to using it, and more power to them. But I can't find a comfortable way to use the damn thing. It's too low on my desk, and I wind up hunched over to play it. It's less comfortable than just holding it in my hands.

Kirk: Which, I should mention, for me isn't all that comfortable either, unfortunately.

Stephen: I just don't understand why they'd even push the idea that it's needed. It's not. I'm left-handed, so I just switch to lefty mode, move Pit with the face buttons, Aim with the stylus on the touch screen and shoot with the R-trigger. Why I'd need a stand is beyond me. But then again, this game also comes with cards.

Kirk: Ha.

Stephen: The only thing that should surprise me, I guess, is that they didn't pack in R.O.B.

Kirk: Or some sort of portable vitality sensor. The control schemes in this game are totally baffling to me.

Stephen: I'd love that, actually. Just the control scheme is baffling? Nothing else? Not… the power menu that you have to play inventory Tetris in?

Kirk: I was trying to think of a good Vitality Sensor follow-up joke, but I'll leave that one. So, the control setup.

Stephen: It is BEGGING for dual-analog, no?

Kirk: Yes! And I don't understand why that's not an option.

Stephen: It's weird. Why support the Circle Pad Pro and not offer it?

Kirk: The game is compatible with the circle pad pro, but not with dual thumbstick control. I like the Circle Pad pro a lot, and it would make the game so much more comfortable for me to play. And yet, even when it's attached, both circle pads are forced to do the same thing. So the closest you can get to having two thumbstick control is to map the face buttons to the reticle and the circle-stick to Pit's movement. You can't even map the D-Pad to Pit's movement and the Circle-pad to the reticle! It's a bizarre omission.

Stephen: Right. I don't think I'm having as hard a time with the controls as you, but it is strange that they don't offer that. How's the campaign? I think you're further in. I've only done two missions.

Kirk: I'm liking it fine—the missions all follow a very set routine so far. Fly, shoot, then land, shoot, fight a boss. Which seems thin, until you get into all the unlocks and other extras—this is really just an arcade game, and the story mode so far feels like window dressing. Funny, charming (occasionally annoying) window dressing, mind.

Stephen: Have you been ratcheting up the difficulty?

Kirk: I've played around with it, yes.

Stephen: I still can't believe that insane system. 99 difficulty levels or something?

Kirk: It gets really, really hard with the difficulty raised.

Stephen:) I've been "betting" hearts to raise the difficulty. But I've only gone up to 3.0 or 3.5.

Kirk: Try putting it up to 5 or so. I'm simply not good enough to compete past a bit above the suggested level—I get owned. Everything moves so fast, and I haven't adjusted to the controls, so if feels very frustrating when it's too punishing.

Stephen: Hmm. I wonder if better weapons would alleviate that. Though I can't see how that would address the problem of simply turning Pit.

Kirk: Oh, they undoubtedly would, to a point. The flying controls feel perfect for the stylus, but on foot...

Stephen: (Of course the control options just for turning Pit are nuts… you can adjust vertical flick speed, horizontal speed… crazy crazy game).

Kirk: All of the control options menus are crazy! Wait, can we talk about these? I want to. The inversion menu, for example.

Stephen: Oh, we can talk about these. This game has so many menus!

Kirk: It gives you this huge set of four arrows which demonstrate how things are currently set, and you tap "Invert Y-Axis" or "Invert X-Axis" to make them flip. They could've used a check box?

Stephen: We haven't even mentioned the one where you toss eggs into the air to unlock trophies ("idols'). Which is very Smash Bros.-esque.

Kirk: Yes! That took me a while to parse. I dropped a lot of eggs. Thank you for showing me how I can use my 3DS coins to buy more eggs.

Stephen: I like living in a world where a company as rich as Nintendo will finance madness like this.

Kirk: I agree. I'm wondering how Nintendo feels about marketing this game.

Stephen: I mean, I have no idea if this is a great game. But it is nuts. And I love crazy games.

Kirk: "It's totally batshit-insane! It's so much weirder than anything else on the 3DS!"

Stephen: I think this is the first Nintendo game I've played in which the lead character jokes about the economy and whether his next enemy is a mini-boss or not. I know you mentioned some of that in your preview, but it's something else when you experience it.

Kirk: The economy jokes in particular are cracking me up. There are more than just the first ones, too. It's a running gag.

Stephen: Oh? That's great. Nintendo game-writing has semi-secretly been wonderful for a while. See Fire Emblem, Mario & Luigi...

Kirk: It's all just this mess of banter and crazy exposition, like a chat-channel that's been left open for every bad guy in the game.

Stephen: Yeah. What do you think of the graphics? And just the tech here? I think the graphics are very impressive. They impressed me more before I owned a Vita.

Kirk: It moves so fast that the 3D bugs me after a while, but the flying bits in particular look great in 3D. I agree about that Vita.

Stephen: But they are good. I'm playing at max-3D-slider.

Kirk: I've felt that way about every 3DS game I've played, now that I've been spending a lot more time playing games on the Vita. I go back and forth on the 3D. Sometimes I need a break.

Stephen: Since they started toning down 3D on this system, I've been cranking the 3D and really enjoying the depth you get.

Kirk: But the colors are great, and the art style is fantastic. I adore the enemy designs.

Stephen: It's funny, just as the world seems to be falling out of love with the idea of portable 3D gaming—thinking it's just a gimmick—I now crave it.

Kirk: I still think it's a gimmick, I guess. With it turned off , I come to the Vita comparison a lot more often, though. For better or for worse.

Stephen: Right. I haven't turned the 3D off. It's too good with it on. Full disclosure: you have a fever! And so 3D isn't what the doctor ordered.

Kirk: That's true!

Stephen: And multiplayer?

Kirk: This game is not recommended for people with the flu.

Stephen: We just did a few rounds of light vs. dark.

Kirk: ) I liked multiplayer, actually.

Stephen: Which, surprise! Was insane. I challenge you to describe light vs. dark mode in 10 words or less.

Kirk: Okay. Here goes.

[two minutes pass]

Kirk: "Kill everyone, then kill the VIP. Also, there is chaos." Close?

Stephen: Pretty good! You sort of captured the weird bit about depleting the team's collective health bar to then turn one of them into a VIP. But you had no room to mention the bonkers detail that, the more powerful weapon you bring to the match, the more damaging your deaths are to your team's health bar.

Kirk: Yeah. So each match counts kills as depleting the collective health bar, and once it's down someone turns into either Pit or Dark Pit. And yeah, the weapon strength thing.

Stephen: What. A. Game.

Kirk: Yeah. That's really all there is to say.

Stephen: And I haven't even figured out these AR cards completely. I just snapped pictures of them. Characters sprouted out of them and…

Kirk: I pity the man who has to write a comprehensive FAQ for this game.

Stephen: Kirk, am I having a fever dream right now? That's all I want to know.

Kirk: It's entirely possible.

Stephen: OK. Well with that, I'm going to get some rest. Let's have you do a proper review of this game for release day.

Kirk: Sounds good. I'm going to go make some soup.

We will have a full review of Kid Icarus: Uprising this weekend. The game launches in North America for the Nintendo 3DS on March 23.

It may have Lucas' blessing, but a Star Wars product isn't a true Star Wars product until the fans accept it into their hearts, or their costuming communities. Both the Light and Dark sides of international Star Wars costuming organizations are now allowing applicants to submit outifts based on BioWare's massively-multiplayer online role-playing game.

While it may seem like an insignificant development to the outsider, the fact that The Jedi Assembly and The Dark Empire are both accepting applications from costumers decked out in the latest The Old Republic gear is a huge step in legitimizing the game in the eyes of the more fervent fans. These are groups that are incredibly strict about the costumes they allow to represent their organizations (the Jedi more so than the Dark Side, appropriately enough).

The Jedi Code of The Jedi Assembly has been modified to include: "Star Wars The Old Republic: "Basic customizable characters" - that is, those you would start out with at the beginning of the game, must only be in earth tone colors. No highly customized characters are allowed. Your costume must have a basic Jedi look to it."

So yes, rather strict, but then a Jedi needs not love, adventure, or high-gear. Let's see what the Dark Side has to say.

"The Dark Empire international dark side costume club is pleased to announce that it will accept for full membership within the organization any costume representing the dark side from the new SWTOR game, including non force-users such as Sith Troopers, Imperial Agents, and Bounty Hunters. Costumes may be canon or customized. Custom dark side costuming is a major component of TDE, and we welcome all dark side costumes, canon or custom, that conform to our costuming standards."

In other words, come to the Dark Side, they have cookies and incredibly flexible costuming rules.

Jedi Assembly Now Accepting TOR Characters [TheForce.net]

I got to play a video game that came back from the dead and feel pretty hopeful about its resurrection. That's because Sleeping Dogs might just fulfill a very specific desire of mine, which is to play through a video game that takes its cues from the movies of, say, Johnnie To or Chan-Wook Park.

Desperation, vengeance and duty all come together in hypnotic fashion when you watch a crime thriller from countries like Hong Kong or Korea and the recipe for crazy action is one that's ripe for translation into video games. For all its stylized gunplay, the buggy Stranglehold didn't scratch that itch for me, no matter if John Woo worked on it. So I've been waiting, patiently, for something that will.

Sleeping Dogs started life as True Crime Hong Kong—developed by Vancouver-based United Front—and was unveiled to the world in a splashy fashion during the 2010 Spike Video Game Awards. Despite that high-profile reveal, Activision unceremoniously scuttled that game. Square Enix acquired the title last year and has been hyping it with gritty mini-movies meant to evoke the Asian crime cinema oeuvre up that the game's drawing on.

The two levels I recently played definitely could've been outtakes from an Infernal Affairs movie. One starts in the kitchen of a bustling restaurant as lead character Wei's getting orders to pound on some fool who's run afoul of the mob boss he's working for.

As I steered the undercover cop through a frantic foot-chase in Hong Kong's chaotic crowded streets, I hurtled food stands, scrambled up neon signs and jumped across rooftops. This city felt alive in a different way. Catching up to my target, I then had to face waves of thugs from his rival gang. The fighting felt responsive and came across with a brutality that surprised me. Another sequence I played had Wei street-racing against another Hong Kong wise guy with two girls along for the ride.

It's here that I need to say that Sleeping Dogs isn't going to be a revolutionary game. The fighting recalls the one-button fisticuffs of Rocksteady's Batman games, explained by the fact that members of the Square Enix London dev team worked on Batman: Arkham Asylum. And the driving will be familiar to anyone who's played recent racing games from EA's Black Box studio, since some United Front members came from that collective.

Yet, open-world games suffer by having too many things to present all under the same engine, but Sleeping Dogs looks like its various activities will be operating on the same level. You're not going to groan when a driving mission comes up and won't feel clumsy when it's time for a fistfight.

But what's really piqued my interest about Sleeping Dogs is the punchiness of its dialogue and the sharpness of its presentation. The delivery of the threats and cussing made me pay attention and didn't feel like phoned-in line readings. The rival I raced against was sleazy and believably reptilian, muttering under his breath as we lined to drag. It's the attention to these little touches—along with a solid gameplay skeleton—that makes me think Sleeping Dogs deserves its second shot at life. I can only hope that I can nail a crotchety old Triad leader into a wooden crate and kick it down a hill, like in Johnnie To's Election. If the game can capture the morally aloof outlaw cool of the world's best gangster movies, then its August debut can't come soon enough.