When I hear about a new game, I usually read the first sentence or two on Wikipedia. I rule out games described as certain genres or types, like soulslike or online-only multiplayer games. Then, I check reviews on a site like Metacritic. If the critic or user reviews (doesn’t need to be both) are good enough, I add it to a list to play.
I also do this with movies and tv. Obviously, with sequels/series I know a little bit more about the games/movies/shows but I still go in as blind as possible.
I am pretty much the opposite. I have been burned in the past… things like difficulty (esp. co-op games not really adapted at all for single-player), inventory/loot, hunger etc being annoying. Or sometimes games start out fine and then just eventually lose me.
In fact for some games without much replay value I’ll just watch a let’s play of it and get 90% (or perhaps better because it’s not me dealing with nonsense) of the experience.
Then again, I also just have mostly stopped buying games. And the last thing I bought off Steam (in 2020) was one of those things I wanted for a while and it ended up being a disappointment for me.
The only thing I’ve been burned on with difficulty is souls style games. Anything else I can handle.
Some of it is probably just me sucking at games or not being focused enough. Even though often times I already feel like I’m taking things slowly enough as-is (and trying to exhaust my options).
Though I also think some of it is how razor-thin margin-of-error can often feel, unforgiving (or as I’ve said, annoying) mechanics, the downsides of randomized/generated content, and also just a big lack of player agency or more specifically good options (like how most games just decide the single-use items you buy are gonna be expensive and selling stuff is barely worth it aside from making room in your inventory).
If a roguelike(/lite) game really kicks my ass almost every time and then I have one really good run where I win (likely due to luck), I probably am not going to want to play that game for a while (if ever) again.