Visuals:
First off, turn off your anti-aliasing. The 3D rendered models didn't seem to like that much and whenever I had FSAA on, the character models became a blurry mass of lines.

Ok, with that little bit out of the way, let me say that this is where the game really shines through. I say visuals because so much of this game is art, visually speaking. For the most part, the character models are the only things that can really be called "3D-rendered". Like all the classic adventure games, you watch your character move through the pre-rendered environment with the camera remaining fixed. When Shamley moves out of the camera's field of view, or moves into another room, the view switches to yet another pre-rendered view. Simple, right? While gamers spoiled by the current trend of 3D-everything may protest, this means a return to beautiful, handcrafted art for backgrounds, a real treat for those who remember older times. The scenery just about everywhere looks beautiful and the game will run decently on 8 and 16 MB video cards. Those with more powerful cards have the option to load the background art and textures onto the video memory and run everything super smooth.

Only two things will interrupt this pre-rendered goodness. The first is your afore-mentioned "psychic" powers. Despite the game world being rendered and the film clips being live action, the shots are so focused, so quick, and take no noticeable time to load, that they fit perfectly into the game. On and off in an instant, they really do give the illusion of supernatural insight.

The other bit to the visuals are the CG cut scenes. Right after the Ubi Soft and Arxel Tribe studio clips play, it cuts to the Universal Studios clip of the world turning, and from there launches into the intro movie-very cinematic indeed. The intro video is beautifully done, relatively smooth and free of grain. While it really isn't "Hitchcock" in its feel, it seems to play up the private eye/film-noir end; voiced over by the main character's account of the great looking bird that came into his office one day. In the end, it was more than enough to whet my appetite and it made me care enough to want to play the game for the first few minutes. It's unfortunate that the other in-game cg cut scenes lack the detail and the narrative quality of the introduction. They're really just little bits of eye candy that aren't too sweet.