Overture Demo: Only Black Screen when starting New Game

[sayanriju]

OS: Linux Mint 8
Graphics Card : Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)
Game Version : Demo of Penumbra Overture

Problem: The cinematics work just fine. But when starting a New Game, it just shows "Loading..." and then only a black screen, not even the mouse pointer. The theme music continues to play in the background. Have to force kill the game by dropping down to a TTY shell login.

Other info:
$ egrep "(GLX|DRI)" /var/log/Xorg.0.log(==) AIGLX enabled

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(==) AIGLX enabled
(II) Loading extension GLX
(II) Loading extension XFree86-DRI
(II) Loading extension DRI2
(II) intel(0): [DRI2] Setup complete
(II) intel(0): direct rendering: DRI2 Enabled
(II) AIGLX: enabled GLX_MESA_copy_sub_buffer
(II) AIGLX: enabled GLX_SGI_swap_control and GLX_MESA_swap_control
(II) AIGLX: GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap backed by buffer objects
(II) AIGLX: Loaded and initialized /usr/lib/dri/i915_dri.so
(II) GLX: Initialized DRI2 GL provider for screen 0
(II) AIGLX: Suspending AIGLX clients for VT switch
(II) AIGLX: Resuming AIGLX clients after VT switch

$ glxinfo | grep render

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direct rendering: Yes
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) 945G GEM 20090712 2009Q2 RC3 x86/MMX/SSE2

Tried copying default_settings.cfg to the game directory as settings.cfg and changing Fullscreen to False. Even in windowed mode, the same problem persists.
Lowered every setting in the Graphics menu to minimal and restarted. Problem persists.

Contents of ~/.frictionalgames/Penumbra/Overture/hpl.log : http://marchlinux.pastebin.com/XyeUA4fY

Does this game work with my card at all (Thank God I decided to try out the demo before buying the game)? If yes, any help on how to get it to work would be greatly appreciated.