by Steve "Digga" Belcher January 3rd, 2000

  If the idea of opening up your eaw.ini file makes you pale in the face, then the utility called "eawctl14.zip" will be for you. All utility and patches tested in this article are available from COMBATSIM.COM™.

Add-ons and Missions

There are also many new add-ons that are a must have. Meatwaters latest soundpack Upgrade to v.2.5 is a definite must have. Once again installation and uninstallation are a breeze. The sounds totally revamp the guns and cannon, in addition to all new sounds to gear, and engine noise to name just a few. Meatwaters latest soundpack is also in combatsim EAW downloads.

Enemy Coast Ahead was one of the first add-ons from the desk of Charles Gunst. He has written some excellent add-ons, dare I say REQUIRED patches, to improve just about everything from the flight model of every plane down to the gun pattern.

There is also a Pilot editor that interfaces with Enemy coast ahead, allowing you to name your own squadron and pilots. It even lets you re-equip with RAF planes whilst flying for the USAAF. This is a truly fine mix, that will keep you boggled for ages!

1942 Turning Point in Europe

TPE is an excellent add-on for EAW that substitutes the BoB campaign, making more planes available and remodeling those involved in the BoB campaign. The Hurricane MKII has to be tried! With 12 guns you can see why this was a bomber buster! This package also remodels many German aircraft, giving bombing capacity to the ME626. There are a few extra squads to join up in the campaign too.

This install and interface can be a bit tricky, but the benefits definitely outweigh the learning curve, if only to fly the Mossie and ME410. Now that the artwork can be changed with the new paint program by Microprose, maybe we can look forward to seeing the full mossie snap views.

If you have done the BoB campaign without Enemy Coast Ahead, then you should do it again, this time for real! An excellent job of an add-on, if you are reading this article then GO GET IT. This add-on easily puts some of the purchased add-ons to shame, and this guy did it in his own time.

Free of Charge!

Micropose has released a program that allows you to edit and repaint the planes in EAW, to better represent a chosen squad. This too you can get via a search at COMBATSIM.COM™ DOWNLOADS from the NAV bar, or click HERE.

These new skins are very easy to add and remove.

Shown are a few of the excellent skins available.

Click to continue

There are a few new textures out there that replace the default textures with snow and desert and corrected colors. These can be added to the game by following the instructions included with the files. They are easy to use and very worthwhile to try EAW Textures. The most incredible of these is a set of terrain tiles from Microsoft's Combat Flight Simulator. View a sample HERE.

Online play

Online play is supported via IPX and the usual multiplayer options. But good news…EAW is also supported on MSN Zone. The Zone is a place that supports hundreds of games for online play and they have in their wisdom added EAW to it. The zone is a great place to meet with other flyers. There is always someone online and willing to fly with you, whether you're a newbie or an ace. There are even squads to join up with.

The Zone can be unstable at times and as mentioned earlier, with large amounts of players in a game you can just blow up for no reason. But all in all the price is excellent value…. Oh.. didn't I mention it's FREE!?

The interface once you host will be very familiar. You are allowed to host a variety of mission types or the old favorite, the "death match."

The Scuttlebutt!

All in all, with this game over twelve months old it is a classic, still commanding top price on the shelves. If you haven't got this sim, why not? I's definitely one of the best WW2 sims to date. It has everything from taking out a German Staff car full of generals...

to escorting bombers and making sure they come back!

Or shooting your best friend's plane and watching him bail out!

The best just got better.

For our review see Air Combat Reviews. For related articles see our EAW Index.

Join a discussion forum on this article by clicking HERE.