To me, honestly, no much. I can see the SEO efforts: if you have to talk about a game called “suckass” probably… very few people will click on the title. But when they put [GTA] and [BALDUR’s GATE] for a generic fantasy game where you steal stuff, you can see the magazine publisher is that hungry for click.
What really annoy when the don’t put the actual name of the game in the title. Specifically when it’s about indie developers that need to push their game’s name out there! Disrespectful for both reader and dev.
The most annoying part, in my opinion, is when the game isn’t actually like the games it mentions.
“You need to survive and also build a base” does not make a game the same thing as Valheim.
“There are dragons” does not make a game Skyrim.
“Contains an elf” doesn’t make a game BH3.Next you’ll say that dark souls isn’t basically just skyrim but harder or that not all open world games are skyrim/botw
this was two posts above yours: https://lemmy.ca/post/11097647
Check the name of the poster
I think it’s fine as long as it makes sense. “X meets Y” can summarize a whole selling pitch and readers will instantly know if they’re interested or not. At some point it even became genre names like “souls-like” or “metroidvania”, you instantly know what you’re in for.
You can’t explain a game in the post’s title so a ton of people won’t even bother looking at it if you don’t do this.
