This loading thing is driving me crazy. When I first start up the game (I timed this), it takes 6 minutes and 23 seconds to get from the main menu into a loaded game. That's insane. Quick loading/reloading take around a minute and a half. The game runs great on my rig, 50-60fps at 1900x1200 at high settings, but this loading is intolerable and making the game unplayable (especially since I die all the time, haha). I can't seem to find any workarounds on the forums either.
edit: ugh, apparently according to the steam forums, it's a problem with the steam client on some systems, and the only current workaround is to use a nodvd crack. This is absolutely retarded, I think I'm going to wait on playing through the game until steam figures this out. Some people are saying it's a securom issue as well.