Lights appear where they should, and only to the degree that the effect isn't ruined. When Quake II first appeared, colored lighting was a new display, but it still annoyed me to enter water and immediately be painted smurf blue, not because it would really happen, but because the engine could. In Montezuma's Return, each scene uses colored lighting for dramatic effect. The moment that button is pressed, all sources of light in the room dim except for the robot's eyes, which suddenly bloom and cast luminous eerie rays across the room while it searches for you. It's a great effect, and the whole game is littered with moments like that.
Models are cartoonish, but intentionally so.
Montezuma's Revenge is in the same vein, and for what they are, the models look great, as detailed as anything Nintendo or Sega has put on our gaming plates. Putting the shape of the model aside, what's impressive is the amount of time that was obviously taken in making the animation, even the idle animations, as smooth and detailed as possible, reminscent of Unreal. The game's been in development for a long time, and it's obvious that the small design team behind this game put in hours of work making every segment of it beautiful and fun, but if there is one thing I could request it would be that they add support for OpenGL or Direct3D to allow non-3DFx owners to join the fun. Performance is a dream on even a lowend machine like a P200 equipped with a single Voodoo card, running at a minimum of 25fps throughout most of the game. If you're lucky enough to own at Pentium II or K6-2 with a Voodoo, Voodoo 2, or Banshee, you've got silky smooth gameplay that will keep you leaping, jumping, and collecting treasure for hours.