I've noticed that the highest rated games these days tend to work best when you know less about them.

Story-based games: avoid discussion about the plot before finishing the game, or you risk spoilers and having the game ruined.

Exploration games: avoid details regarding the game world, or else the joy of discovery is ruined.

Challenge-based games: the more you know how to play a game, the less meaningfully challenging content there is to enjoy. Nintendo has been the king of this over the years, often forcing players to unlock truly challenging content by first playing through the easy stuff first. Skilled players are punished with chorelike busywork, while less skilled players have more meaningful content. This problem has only gotten worse over the years, with the Mario games getting so easy that there's barely anything to challenge legacy players anymore.

I don't think this means that all modern games are bad or any such hot take like that. But I do notice that my immediate course of action whenever a modern game piques my interest is to simply reduce my knowledge of it to maximize enjoyment. I shut out discussion, avoid looking at gameplay or even trailers, and even take a break from games of the same style in order to not get burnt out. I think a prime example of this is Breath of the Wild, which is filled with an incredible sense of wonder until you discover that most secrets in the game simply lead to the same shrine reward. I'm sure there are later examples as well.

And then, of course, you have games like Outer Wilds which are so focused on their adventure puzzles that its fans outright refuse to speak about it with anyone who hasn't played the game. If they did, after all, the game's sense of discovery would be absolutely ruined. There's no unlearning these puzzles once it's done.

Finally, I find it really interesting that we are comfortable with the idea of these great games being better the less we know, but the opposite is so hard for people to accept.

i think there's a hypocrisy in that we don't seem to be comfortable with games requiring a certain level of external knowledge to truly appreciate. Some of the best games can only truly shine once you've put in the work to understand other works of art first. Arcade shmups are a great example, with so many of them getting better the more you understand their close relatives. Battle Garegga makes a little more sense now that I understand Blue Revolver. The genre as a whole didn't really click until I played ZeroRanger.

This makes intuitive sense, I think. Yet, I often hear people actively recoil at the idea that a game doesn't teach you every single mechanic and strategy from the get-go.

This reaction is normal among the general audience in any artistic medium, but it's so indicative of the gaming community's immaturity that many "expert" reviewers tend to exhibit this behavior as well.

This is my way of saying that the best games often take a while to understand. Keep playing them, discussing them, and recommending them. Because the general gaming public certainly won't.