Well there you have problem #1.

Whatever it is, if you didn't create something yourself (with enough knowledge, of course) you CANNOT be
sure that it's working fast and efficiently and that it is doing what it should do without bugs or glitches.
And it turns out that these 'things' aren't as fast and free of bugs as one might think/like.

Not doing this stuff on your own also means you often can't do what you want to do because your tools don't allow
you to do so.

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To quickly analyze this video from a graphics-guy's perspective, here's what I see:
- simple lighting
really. There's nothing special here (which doesn't automatically mean that it's a bad thing)

- an annoying video grain filter
video grain is great for hdr rendering (kills banding arfifacts), but it should be more subtle than this
Edit: yeah I know, the ppl who made this didn't use the video grain to increase the image quality. They wanted to have a cool, noisy look. But it still is too intensive imo.

- some shadow casting pointlights
no softshadows, I don't know how well shade-c handles shadows. It might do pretty well if it uses things like caching

- no hdrr
which I think is really sweet, although it's not a must-have for good graphics if you do things right

- too much contrast
I totally hate this. there are so many people who want as much contrast and saturation as possible which just kills the entire look

- no bloom :[
for me this is just like.. cake without icing. (I might be a little obsessed with bloom)


meh.. might be a bit too grumpy but I don't like the shot from the video very much.

To answer your question: Yes it is possible, but I wouldn't go for that specific look, imo.

not really.. It has a lot to do with using your shaders in the right way, properly adjusting them and having good and consistent assets.
But yeah. Without some shaders everything would look like crap. But then again, shaders are needed to render your objects, even if
you just use Acknex's default shader.

Shade-C would be a good point to start. Like I've said, if the shadowmapping is handled well in s-c. it shouldn't be a problem to have some shadow casting lights.
plus, Shade-C comes with a lot of useful stuff and seems to be fast enough (a modded version was already used in a commercial game)

(Edit: There are also gorgeous looking games with rather simple renering and postprocessing btw.. don't just go for complex graphics)