"The Walking Dead: A New Frontier Ep. 1-2" Rapidfire Extravaganza

I normally don't like to review individual episodes of an episodic game series. To me, the quality of an episodic game series should be judged based on all episodes together. However, this year two episodes of the new season of Telltale's The Walking Dead came out and certain aspects of it are up for spots on certain lists in my end of the year awards this year, and I promised that I would have a review up for everything I played and finished, so here we are. Rather than doing a full-length, intensive review for each episode, I'll be doing a pretty basic review of each and giving each its own score. When I say basic, I mean basic. Like, I will just kind of be saying what I think without much regard to structure or finesse. If you're reading this, you'll be in and out in a few minutes, so lets get started.
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 Episode 1: Ties that Bind, Part 1:

As with every Telltale title, the first episode is meant to get us acquainted with the major characters of the series. Ties that Bind Part 1 introduces us to our new protagonist: Javier. Obviously, Javier falls short of Lee and Clementine as far as protagonists in The Walking Dead go, but he is still quite a compelling character. Alongside Javier are Mariana (his niece), Gabe (his nephew), Kate (his brother's wife with whom there is a very interesting and sketchy as all get-out love subplot), and eventually Clementine, whom we all know and love. As usual, even the characters that we don't like are well developed enough that you can at least see where they're coming from. Clementine is now 13 or 14, and once again Telltale does a fantastic job of aging her realistically from a character perspective. The role that she plays in the story does not become clear until episode 2, but it is still nice to have such a beloved character around.
The worldbuilding in episode 1 is just about the best that Telltale has ever done. They must be commended for that. The world has been overrun with walkers for years at this point, and Telltale masterfully conveys the changes to the world in that time.
Gameplay this time around is about what you would expect, except it is easier than before. That isn't saying much, I realize, but it is still true. You no longer have to aim with the right stick in tense situations. Rather, the gameplay has become fully quick-time event driven. Whether you like that or not will be up to you. I personally thought that i made the game feel more cinematic, but it inarguably means that there is less challenge to be found.
The story is pretty bare-bones in this episode, actually. Its pretty much just meant to establish the setting and the characters, and in that it succeeds, but save for a particularly shocking moment, it doesn't make much effort to do anything beyond that, nor does it need to. As a foundation for the rest of the series to be built off of, one could hardly ask for a better episode.
There is, however, one major negative that I need to address, and it is a difficult one to talk about without spoiling. Suffice it to say that there is a character death depending on choices you made in the previous seasons, and this character death is handled terribly. I understand that the amount of points I'm going to be taking off for this may seem harsh given that I've hardly given any details, but you'll just have to see what I mean for yourself. It is essentially handled in a two-second flashback and it boggles my mind that Telltale thought it would be sufficient.

Let us review for Episode 1:
Poorly handled character death -1
Even less challenge than usual: -0.2

The final score for The Walking Dead: A New Frontier Episode 1 is...
8.8/10 - Quite Good.
Now, onto the next one.
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Episode 2: Ties that Bind, Part 2:

Ties that Bind Part 2 opens up once again in Javier's past. This time, we get a little bit more insight into the origin of the morally sketchy but nonetheless really compelling love subplot between him and his brother's wife. The result is that this aspect becomes even more compelling in a guilty kind of way. We also come to see his brother as even more of a dirtbag than we already thought, but in a complex kind of way where we can also see exactly why he is the way that he is. After that, the episode picks up where episode 1 left off, and we learn of a brand new threat in the world: a group calling themselves "The New Frontier," the members of which are identifiable from the brands on their skin. Bad things happen and the group finds themselves on their way to a settlement called Richmond. The story is more compelling in this episode than the last one for reasons that I cannot say without spoiling. Suffice it to say that more happens and just about every character gets more development.
Gameplay, believe it or not, is improved over the first episode. This is odd, considering that they came out on pretty much the same day. Either way, more steps were taken to make the combat quicktime events more cinematic. There will be instances where the necessary buttons will appear over several walkers and they will fall in time with your button pressing speed. It is a small tweak, to be sure, but it did make the experience more cinematic.
Like in the first episode, however, there is one thing that took away from the experience. There is a revelation about a certain character that might cause other characters not to trust them. One other character finds this out and before you know it you have to choose between killing the character who found out or having something else happen to the character in question. This all happens over the course of literally under a minute. I get the feeling that it was meant to be a major story decision, but it all happened so fast and with so little development that I couldn't help but not really feel that stakes.
All in all, though, Episode 2, while not perfect, is an improvement over episode 1, and I look forward to seeing what happens next in this series.
Let us review.

Important plot development rushed - 1

So, the final score for The Walking Dead: A New Frontier Episode 2 is...
9/10 - Fantastic

There you go. Now you have a reference for when anything from these episodes appears in one of the end of the year lists.