Some more things to keep in your head:
- no reviews out before launch and/or no reviews allowed of certain parts of the game

- major bugs in release. That is what the beta is for. If they fail to fix them before release, why would we think they will ever fix them? Also, "we will patch it in the future" is such a bad take. If you take my money now, the game should work now. If you fix the game later, then how about I give my money later too (or never).

play games like Tower of Guns or MOTHERGUNSHIP and come back and tell me that. or SUPERHOT, you can beat the main campain there in about 2 hours

I'd say this is only applicable if the game's existence is well-known enough.

For the average game jam game on itch.io, there's not going to be any reviews before release. If a game is made in 24 hours and then immediately released, how could there realistically be a review pre-release?

(Then again, at least such games generally don't cost much in terms of money or (usually) time to try out.) Does this apply to game jams? In particular, if a game jam game wins an award, is it likely to be bad?

Again, I have a feeling this works for major releases, but not things like game jams.

(When there's a game jam, there's going to be some judges who judge the submitted games, and the best ones (according to the judges) may be given awards.)

I have not played Tower of Guns or MOTHERGUNSHIP yet, but I have played SUPERHOT and I got bored almost exactly after two hours of playing SUPERHOT after playing SUPERHOT.

Once you're playing a mod, particularly one that has entirely new levels, that could arguably be a different game. You're not playing Doom; you're playing the Doom mod that John Romero (for example) developed. Or, you're not playing Celeste, you're playing Into the Jungle (which, by the way, is apparently a good Celeste mod that isn't too difficult (at least not for the A-sides)).

Worth noting, of course, that mods to vary in quality. Some mods are very good, while others are garbage.

Hot air ?. That's not a nice way to speak about the OP...

...

Oh!, and nice scientific test. One that I'm sure has had a lot of research poured into it...

My take on this is, if the release trailer is cringe-worthy, then there's a high probability that the game will probably be bad as well. <--- a very scientific evaluation too. :)

Youtube the game and find the desire to play it or not. It isnt difficult to find actual game play when many people on youtube have channels for exactly this problem. Splattercat for independant games is a fine choice. random people for most other content. Cheers!

Did you find New World marketing budget content cringeworthy?

Or, you could check the trailer and see if the gameplay shown there looks interesting.

If there's no gameplay in the trailer, then perhaps the actual game might not be that great, as the developer seems to not want to show it off.

Sorry, yes I specifically meant the big industry awards, not things like game jams. It’s the same for films as well, how many Oscar’s for instance multiples how bad a film is. It’s not a 100% accurate as the occasional piece slips though and wins an award, but it’s a good starting block.

then it works. it lasted for you 2 hours, and the game lenght is about 2 hours. so if the game was made artifically longer, just to make some kind of lenght metric, then it would not work very well.

Said most of it in my review of MoM. I would copy paste it here, but Gog makes it difficult to go the store page if you own the game. Steam? Going to the store page of a game you own is easy. Shows just how far Gog has fallen.
Oh yes it does. The factor that has ruined a few games I own, is the fact that Silthering got it's hands on it. Ding, Ding, ding, bad game.
Exactly

check steam tags:
Visual Novel
Walking Simulator
Story Rich
Atmospheric

these mean there is no gameplay

There will always be people who say they beat a game in two hours, no matter what game it is.
Very good point
That is not always the case. I have watched games on YouTube, and bought them because they looked fun, only to find that they had very little to do with what was portrayed. Case in point, Distant Worlds 2. There should a law against putting something like that out.