Can't play the game; freezes on startup

[SadPanda]

So far, I have played:

Fallout: New Vegas (no issues)
Just Cause 2 (no issues)
Metro 2033 (some screen tearing)
Mirror's Edge (some screen tearing, fixed by v-sync)
Portal 2 (no issues)
Sam & Max (controller and mouse issues)
Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (no issues)
Sonic Generations (no issues)
Tomb Raider (no issues)
The Walking Dead (wouldn't boot, fixed with dinput8.dll)

Metro 2033, I just haven't bothered to fix yet, but I know it has one. Sam & Max, and other Telltale Games, have known compatibility issues with Windows 8.

Amnesia is the only game I've tried that has given me issues that I couldn't fix within minutes of trying.

It could be that the GPU is defective, and Amnesia is just the first game to show it. It just seems unlikely to me, but I am inexperienced with this kind of stuff, so who knows.