Ok so I found the "Technical Issues" thread (sorry for missing that originally) and read through that in which I saw a number of others having a very similar (if not the same) problem.
I've emailed my dxdiag.txt to the support address as requested, I also decided to try loading the game directly (from the "shipping" folder) and using the "Run as Administrator" option.
The end result was pretty much the same, however the amount of time until the loading animation and sounds froze was about twice as long as prior attempts.
