Did you read the quote you're mocking? It talks about capturing "the experience of exploring the universe," not about accurately recreating minutiae.
Space Engine is beautiful, but it doesn't and will never make you feel like an explorer, like you're actually setting foot on a strange new world, it won't make you feel lonely and small, because you're nothing but a camera. And non-interactive media are... well, exactly that.
Yeah I read the review. It's some of the dumbest shite I've read in a review in a long time. The mere fact that it's trying to excuse the lack of promised multiplayer with a long-winded exposition on existentialism would be hilarious if it weren't so pathetic.
Anyways, quote in question more fully:
No game, film, book or otherwise has been more effective in capturing what the experience of exploring the universe must be. Lonely, hostile and unforgiving, Hello Games' effort works so hard to reject the convention on how games are made that its easy to understand why people expecting something more traditional might come away disappointed
First off, suggesting that no other medium have ever as effectively captured a lonely, hostile and unforgiving world is laughable to me. He's welcome to his opinion, and I'm welcome to think it's stupid as all get out.
Second, the whole "people expecting something more traditional" is like the most massive cop-out bullshit of all time.
Third, to your point about feeling like an explorer, feeling lonely and small, yeah, maybe Space Engine doesn't fully convey that. And No Man's Sky doesn't either. Nor does it capture a "lonely, hostile and unforgiving" universe. The universe of No Man's Sky is one of the emptiest and least challenging portraits of sci-fi exploration that I've experienced in a long time.
If the experience of exploring the universe is the mind-bending monotony that No Man's Sky presents, it's no wonder space travel has become a back seat interest to the general public in recent decades.
