Everything works fine now. I have a habit of not restarting my computer, only using the hibernation mode. Last night I finally fully restarted Windows and BAM! It works just fine! Everything is fine now: The opening ads run fine, the game plays fine, the cutscenes play fine, everything. I can only assume it was the desktop shortcut right-clicking properties/compatibility solution that solved the problem, it just needed a genuine restart after the changes. Oops. Thanks for the help Openedge. Now to figure out how and especially why I should bother killing all these damn level 8 skeletons (not too impressed now it's actually working).
