Deathclaws are perhaps the most menacing enemy in a Fallout game. Which you honestly expect from something that has both “death” and “claws” in its name. They’re fast, strong, and incredibly unpretty. Fortunately, you learn to man (or woman) up pretty quick this installment.
On the first Minuteman mission, players have to help defend five survivors in Concord from Raiders. You get a suit of Power Armor and mini-gun for this task, which makes that a lot easier. The problem is, the ruckus the Sole Survivor, Minutemen, and Raiders make wakes up a Deathclaw. It has to be defeated to complete the mission.
The first time I went through this, my fear of Deathclaws kept me from doing the obvious. I had been playing around with the Power Armor, which has limited battery power this time around, been spooked when the Deathclaw got one shot in, and mistakenly thought I had to play shadow games to kill it. This led to the Deathclaw getting itself stuck in the sewers from which it originally emerged. Yes, stuck. And attempting to lure it out completely drained the power on the Power Armor.
Which led to my attempting to lure it out of the sewer with a practically unarmed woman. (This was a stupid and did not work.) Eventually I just reloaded the save from the start of the mission, went up in its face with the minigun blazing, and ended the entire Raider/Deathclaw conflict in under 5 minutes. I did, however, get two off-screen videos of the experience. (Embargo and PlayStation 4 space issues meant I was hesitant to try and take official video from the console.)
Fallout 4 is immediately available for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows PC. Yes, there are a lot of bugs and glitches. Especially on the PlayStation 4 version, where the framerate will inexplicably drop for no reason and Codsworth will clip through every ceiling.
