Lets start with the attitude of most of the project out there is scam. Then you can dig deeper to see if its not scam or not.
Normally, I check the team, its good if the team is real, but not likely easy to identify as someone just made up the identity with no time.
Second, I check there road map, its good if they can show a detailed and long term road map. of course it is related to the idea of the coin/token.
Finally, I tend to focus on the coin with its own chain, I feel the token ICO is likely selling the dream for money, the coin with its own chain can survive even when the dev abandon it and mostly if that happen, there is a solution of community take over, so the coin will survive.

By the way, you should make the thread title clearer.