There's an inherent problem with getting a game review out day 1, you miss a lot of the experience. Whether it's fully packed online servers or simply rushing through the game to get the review out on time, trust me, you tend to miss something.
In the case of Fable 2 if you get your review out on day 1 you are going to miss the entire online co-op experience. The folks at Variety recently received their review copy of the game (damn it Peter, where is mine?) and they are asking themselves the same question. The author points out that online reviews have the luxury of updating themselves after being published as well as the importance of having a timely review as factors in the decision.
All that being said, there was an interesting letter with the review copy, straight from Sir Peter's mouth:
I have a favour to ask you -- we build this game not only to appeal to gamers like yourself, but to appeal to anybody. So please, please, please, please, please find somebody who doesn't play games, watch them play it and see how their world turns out, because I think it's only when you see those differences that the unique experiences comes through.
Again, this is a question Variety isn't quite sure how to answer. Typically a reviewer plays a game from start to finish investing hours upon hours. Surely they can't ask Grandma to do the same?
I offer this suggestion to Variety - co-op with them. Thankfully the game supports drop in and drop out play so it should be easy enough to hand them another controller and have see how they handle things.
Source: Weblogs.variety.com