Well, actually you can't know that unless you try
BTW same applies for the game too
If you want to try it to be sure totally up to you
For me the smell of it, knowing where it came from, and what it is in general is enough to let me know it isn't something I actually want to taste. I have had to pick up some bad accidents by my dogs and a few nearly made me retch it was so bad. I am extremely confident that it is not something I would want to eat.
If it were something I knew might be more in my general area of interest then I might try it. Say a new flavor of pizza or ice cream. Or maybe a fruit I had never tried.
In some cases having general, second-hand, peripheral, or other forms of knowledge is enough to make a reasonable and educated guess on something.
Forum posts, asking questions about the game play, mechanics, and character from my friends who are playing it, screen shares of the game with friends on Discord, watching a video or two, reading reviews … that gives me enough general knowledge to know whether it might be worth my time and money to either try or not.
It has many things I know I don't like in games and very few things I do like.
I think many people get confused when they get on the old "well if you haven't played this game you can't know anything about it and thus can't have any educated and valid opinion on it".
There are, of course, aspects of the game itself you may not fully understand or experience unless you play it yourself. But having a general idea of whether the game might be something you would like - that doesn't always need actual first hand experience of playing the game yourself.
Using the dog poop example it is true I can't describe what the taste of it is like, I would need to taste it to know that, but I don't need to taste it to know I don't want to eat it because I have enough other information about it to let me make that decision.
People get confused because there are levels of knowing something. VR might be a good example. I have never tried any form of VR game ever. I have no understanding of what it would be like to wear a head set like that, the gloves, or play a game in VR. Consequently I would have less reliability in saying VR sucks when I never tried it.
On the other hand I have played games similar to HZD. I am familiar with the concepts of the game, mechanics, etc. So I feel less need to actually sit and play it when making a decision.
Another example might be getting a bike. I know a lot about bikes and what I tend to like. When buying one I test out a lot of them - different makes and models - to see if I might like certain features. I don't, however, test out the kids tricycle - as I know based on its size and features it would not be something I would want.
It comes down to how much general knowledge you have about a group or category of an item. The less you know about it the less you can make a decision. The more you know the better able you are to correlate similar experiences to a new one and make a fairly confident decision about whether you would like something or not.
EDIT: I thought of a good game example but can't recall the name of the game. A new game in 2020 was what some have called a walking simulator game. Made by some big name person with mixed reputation. Damn bugs me I can't think of the name.
Anyhow that game play seems so different to anything I have played I would not feel confident saying I would not like it. I feel like it is not my kind of game so I have not purchased it, nor have plans to, but I can't be as certain about whether I would enjoy it or not as its game play is rather different to anything I am familiar with.
Or another example. A sports game or a horror game or a hunting game. All things I do not like. I don't need to really play any of those to know it would be very unlikely that I would like them.
It also comes down to features. There are some features I really do not like at all. If a game has those features, and I am already familiar with those features from another game, I really don't have to play that game to know I won't like that feature.
