@chrisrenson sounds like something weird happened while installing the CLI. best bet is to reset the installation using the instructions over here
with that done, you should be able to successfully run the Particle: Create Project command.
if you haven’t seen them already, we have a bunch of docs and workshops: https://docs.particle.io/workbench
in particular, here’s a video we just released showing how to get up and running with local compilation: https://youtu.be/GW1zzSE9Y80
hope it helps 