Alright, so I got this game on Steam when it was on sale for like no money. I figured it'd run on my new laptop. On paper I meet all specs even in the video department, problem is the video is onboard as opposed to dedicated. Here are the specs:

Intel core i5

4gb ram

Intel HD Graphics 3000

Game runs pretty smooth and looks sharp... Until I hit the escape key to pause the game. At that point the game crashes to the desktop or locks up the machine until I use task manager to close the game out. So the question is does anybody have any advice aside from buy a new computer?

Check this thread out and see if manually applying the latest patch fixes things.

Running the game as an administrator worked for me with launching the game, but you actually got into the game. It's still worth a shot; find the ME executable, open up its properties, and check the option to run it as an administrator. It might not fix your problem. Hell, your problem is totally different from the one I ran into when I played the game. But it's easy to try.