The game crashes at startup

[Portal]

Hi,
when I launch the game I'm getting a "The VAD has been replaced by a hack pending a complete rewrite" - warning.
The game starts but stuck in the loading screen (that huge s2 icon) after ~30 seconds everything freezes and I cant do anything but reboot.

glxinfo output:

#direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: SGI
server glx version string: 1.4
server glx extensions:
client glx vendor string: Mesa Project and SGI
client glx version string: 1.4
client glx extensions:
OpenGL vendor string: X.Org
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD REDWOOD
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 7.10.1-devel
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20
OpenGL extensions:
04:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Redwood PRO [Radeon HD 5500 Series]
Linux Desk 2.6.37-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri Feb 11 16:55:18 UTC 2011 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+ AuthenticAMD GNU/LinuxThe glxgears spin perfectly fine with the right frames

A console.log is not created.

I hope you can help me, I don't really want to dual boot windows for nothing but a few HoN games :)

[Naib]

You sure a console.log isn't created
really need the info from that. AT a guess I would say the FOSS drivers are not capabile of starting the renderer.

Are the ati proprietary drivers an option?
might be worth editing the startup.conf to lower some setting (animted background et al)