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Plenty of ways to identify if the project is fake or not. Look for team record, their country origin, their vision for the coin, whitepaper, exchanges where they want to hold IEO, or how they willing to public the amount of fundraising for ICO,etc.
As you write, there are many ways of checking that could tell us that the project is a scam. Unfortunately, there is probably no way to be sure that the project is not a scam. All we can do is minimize the danger, but you can never be 100% sure that the project is safe.
I agree with the opinion of several users here that the safest should be IEO from the largest trusted exchanges such as binance etc.
The problem with IEO with binance is that there are only a few projects a year there, and additionally, before you invest in IEO you need to first invest a few thousand dollars at BNB and then.... will you be able to take part in the lottery where the prize is the opportunity to invest in a new IEO.
What more the the probability of hitting the winning lottery ticket is generally only a few percent so to maximize your chances you should have 10 lottery tickets (10 is MAX) and how much do you need to have 10 tickets? Only 500 BNB means.... $10k - $12k
So inwesting 10k in BNB to win a chance to invest a few hundred dollars in new project is definitely not for small players...
Other words investing in "safe" projects could be very expensive.......