I generally respect everything the OP writes because of his clear, measured reasoning, so I take note of this.
but,
"I did NOT expect, even the PC version, to trump Uncharted 3"
doesn't make sense to me at all. I played Uncharted3 on a glorious 50" LED this weekend from 5 feet away. I have to say that the visuals leave a lot to be desired. Everything flickers and there are jaggies and low res textures. The phat PS3 I was playing on sounded like a boeing taking off, so maybe somethings up there(?). All I know is it looked like there is a hell of a lot of room for improvement. Note, no updates had been made on that console, so the aiming was also bordering on horrendous.
Just need to say that. Aged well it hasn't.