I liked the way it came together, though the SWAT guys really set a new low in competency. Sylar going all Norman Bates/mom thing didn't quite work that much for me, but at least Quinto managed to pull it off.
The biggest drawback of the whole shapechanging stuff? Someone else but Quinto has to pretend he's Sylar, reducing Quintos screen-time and forcing someone to act like him.
I am not a big fan of this "identity crisis", especially since the relationship to Danko is still off.
Though generally, that Sylar has to do some soul-search about the fact that he killed his mother is... natural.
It appears to me as if Nathan got the stupidity gene now - what does he believe he can achieve against Sylar? With a gun?
I hope that Danko failed to kill Sylar is not just a result of his incompetence to hit the right spot, but of the fact that the supposed flaw of the regeneration ability actually is wrong.
For me, I am waiting till the end of the season before quitining. I may not quit, but they would need to pull off an incredible final episode next week to keep me. They need to have a cool battle, reset Sylar, mindwipe most people, and do it without a deus ex machina, all in 1 hour. Personally from past experience I don't think they can pull it off, but I will give them this one last shot.
I think mind-wipes and resetting Sylar are pretty much deus ex machina.
Maybe Sylar just has to die, as much as I love the character?
But in the end, they can mindwipe the characters and the population in the show as much as they like, they can't mindwipe you. So whether the characters forget or not is irrelevant, what they need to do is improve on their writing, avoiding making characters unreasonably stupid (if they make mistakes, they should be due to incomplete information, misinformation and misdirection of others.)
I think it would have been very well possible to display Danko, Nathan, Sylar and HRG as strategic thinkers that manipulate each other and the rest.
But the only guy that gets real manipulation done is Sylar. But that doesn't work that well with his identity crisis.