Shadow of the Colossus is a great gaming experience that is next-gen in spirit.
To begin with, the premise in this game is very simple. There is only a shell of a story that provides context at the outset, and then goes away during the game itself. The actual gameplay portion of the game reads like shampoo bottle instructions: find colossus, slay colossus, repeat. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. The colossi (though similar in style) have a good range of behaviors, abilities, and morphology that make them disparate enough to stay interesting. They all have a pretty rigid set of tasks needed to take them down, and discovering these tasks ranges from very easy and intuitive to pretty obscure.
Now to the technical details. The game features top-notch animation for both the colossi and the main character (and his horse). The animations are very organic, and deliver a look that you would expect from a creature of that size. Size is another thing that the game handles well. The terrain is expansive, and the colossi are huge. Both are rendered in such a way that makes the scale very believable.
Now the bad. The camera was a bit annoying at first. I realize the difficulties involved when trying to get a 5 foot person and a hundred-foot tall colossus on the screen at the same time, but much of the time the camera is subject to player control, and I ended up spending a good amount of time grappling with it. Conversely the camera worked very well when you were actually on the colossus. It was very smart about getting the angle that best captures the action.
The other glaring issue was the framerate. There are moments when it runs ok, but it seldom runs at full framerate and at time dips embarrassingly low. It is a game that that while impressive now, would be stunning on a next-gen system just by running smoothly and being able to make some of the terrain and textures more interesting.
Overall I recommend it to anybody that does not need a story or substantial gameplay variety. The game is not extremely long, so it is a perfect game to rent or gamefly for a bit. It is easy to break in and knock off a few colossi at a time. It is really an amazing achievement technically, and it is unfortunate that the aging PS2 can't keep up with the designers' vision.