Silent Hunter 5 surfaces on PC

The increasingly crowded first half of 2010 got a little more crammed today when Ubisoft announced that Silent Hunter 5 would ship "early" next year. The latest installment in the 13-year-old, 1.5 million-unit-selling World War II submarine sim franchise will be published solely for the PC by Ubisoft. Development duties will be handled by Ubisoft Romania, which crafted the last two entries in the series: 2007's Silent Hunter: Wolves of the Pacific and its 2008 expansion, Silent Hunter: Wolves of the Pacific U-Boat Missions.

Like Wolves of the Pacific, Silent Hunter 5 will cast players as the captain of a German U-boat, much like that portrayed in the Oscar-nominated film Das Boot. However, instead of the expansion's Indian Ocean setting, the game will be set in the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean. Players will fill the boots of a U-Boat commander and will be able to view the interior of the submarine and interact with its crew from a realistic first-person view. The game will also feature a detailed single-player campaign that will shift dynamically depending on players' victories or defeats. The game will also sport a brand-new user interface for commanding the U-boat.

For more about Silent Hunter 5, visit its just-opened Web site. For a look at 2007's well-reviewed Silent Hunter: Wolves of the Pacific, check out the video below.