The game never bore me, I play it at the hardest difficulty and the challenges are really balanced. Granted, that choice makes you extremely vulnerable to the aliens surrounding you but in my opinion it only adds the realism that a single human can't be an invincible rambo-god that annihilates an entire extra-terrestrial species just by staring at it awkwardly, waving muscles and yawning out of simplicity.
In Prey, you have to be careful and plan your approach, don't confront your enemies that are very often going to destroy you if you get too cocky -they're here to remind you that- and play the way you feel like it. That's the way I see this game, I don't have the impression of incarnating a certain character, I really end up playing how I would actually thread in an alien infested spaceship full of corpses: carefully, focused, stressed out and appreciating any moment in which I know I am completely safe.
For those who know the genre, Prey is a huge and nostalgic throwback to when I played the systemshock series, the same paranoid feeling is there, and I get the same habit of contemplating a fearsome rage-filled beast from behind a bullet-proof window. It isn't the kind of game you'll enjoy with the storms of bullets that you unleash on your enemies, it's more of a run away like the fragile human that you are, lock yourself up in a security booth (or die trying) and think of the best way to pick them out strategically losing the least amount of limbs possible.
Progression-wise, Prey reminds me of the first Bioshock, looking in every room, purposely avoiding the main objective when I see a path that strays away from it, collecting recordings and listening to them while sipping coffee and reading every e-mail people send each other, getting attached to some of them, wondering if they are still alive and feeling a bit sad when I stumble across a corpse wrenched in pain that has the name of an electrician's love interest.
If you think that space is empty and a ghost ship is life-less, think again. I have clocked in 15 hours in Prey these past two days, and I sincerely hope there are 20 more ahead of me.