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FuturLab is a developer that, within only a handful of games, have gained a following for their dedication to creating fun, simple titles that are enjoyable, addictive and great value for money. From Coconut Dodge, through Velocity and onto the several titles they created for PlayStation Mobile, FuturLab are behind some of the very best titles available on PSP and Vita. This week sees the release of a Vita-specific version of Velocity, Velocity Ultra, that includes improved visuals, trophies and…

The news that the Wii U has been hacked came out earlier this week, and there seems to have been confirmation of it. Things seem to have gone from bad to worse with Nintendo, with low sales, a lack of software and now piracy stopping their latest console from growing. That's what the detractors are saying, anyway. The reality is completely different.

More than once, the second hand video games market has been called worse than piracy. Like piracy, the actual creator of the game gets absolutely nothing from your playing their title, but unlike if you'd just downloaded the game for free, you're actively giving your money to somebody else, and the difference in cost that that makes is often either very small (a matter of £2-3, especially at launch) or available specifically because the developer isn't getting a single penny from the sale.

Bioshock Infinite is quickly becoming one of the top rated games this generation and, more, taking its place amongst the Final Fantasy 7s and Ocarina of Times that make up the best games ever. A huge part of that is thanks to its emphasis on the world the player inhabits. Columbia is a meticulously built paradise in the sky, a paradise that it's impossible not to want to explore.

Evoland takes the key gameplay components many of us grew up with and melds them together into a game that not only relives some of the best adventures of the late-eighties and nineties, but also is just pretty fun in its own right. Beginning life as a Ludum Dare competition winner, Shiro Games built upon the initial concept and created something that anyone old enough to remember the massive change between Final Fantasy VI and VII, or how rapidly games…

Kings & Warlords is a popular MMORTS game with tens of thousands of fans and many dedicated players. It's a genre that has grown in recent years, thanks in part to games like Farmville acting as a gateway to other, more fantasy-driven casual experiences. Today it's the genre of choice for film tie-ins - both The Godfather and The Hobbit have seen MMORTS games based upon them - and its popularity doesn't seem to be waning. We were lucky enough to be able to speak with the producer of Kings & Warlords, Miika Tams, about how developer Digital Chocolate ...

At some point over the last six or seven years, the gaming world completely changed. The omnipotent power of the big publishers started to wane and, thanks to more open platforms like Steam, Android and the App Store on iDevices, smaller developers could release a game and have it sell hundreds of thousands, if not millions of copies. Perhaps the biggest indicator of this shift in recent weeks was at the BAFTAs. Indie games took home almost every single prize, the most surprising of which was when industry mega-sellers like Forza and FIFA lost out in the ...

It's difficult to get an unbiased view on piracy. People who download content illegally are either thieves or are paving the way for a more consumer-friendly tomorrow; publishers are either protecting their intellectual property or are pushing honest gamers to jump through hoops in order to enjoy their purchase (often when pirates get access without any issue). Sometimes the line between the two options blurs and all the statements end up being true. This has come further into light thanks to EA's SimCity, which boasts a need for an always-on connection. ...

The big issue for the PlayStation 4 is its lack of offline backwards compatibility. It’s the most often repeated complaint, often followed some variation of the phrase “it’s not a deal breaker, but really Sony should have made more of an effort.”

Ubisoft's press release revealing Assassin's Creed IV Black Flags was a masterclass in not saying things, but it left a pretty large set of lines within which to read between. Given that this is one of our first official announcements of a multi-gen game, it was interesting to see whoever wrote it squirm between too much information and not enough. Although it largely only confirms things we already knew, it's possible to make a few vague conclusions about release dates and power based on where the press release fell short.