Upon clicking Play after opening the launcher, the game does not load, instead it shows the Mojang logo on a white background and then goes back to this screen again, right where I was before clicking Play.
This only occurs on 1.7.4 onwards, 1.7.2 and all before work perfectly fine.
The Intel 4 Series (and older) video cards are unable to play 1.7.4 and future versions of Minecraft. You will need to buy a new video card or computer to play new versions.
For now, you can still play 1.7.2 or older versions of the game.