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Hold it together, man. And I do, just, but I can understand why others have, reportedly, torn out of their time with Kitchen screaming and sobbing, or had to be held down for fear that they'd do themselves actual injury in trying to back away from the demonic woman who disposes of your all-too-brief potential salvation and slowly makes her way back for you. She stabs a knife down, hard, into "your" thigh and the instinct is to groan in agony, but the pain never comes. You swing your leg. It's still there. It's just a game, just a game. I'm telling myself that, but if this were a game I'd have broken out of this chair by now and turned whatever weapon I could find on this witch. She's right in my face, so close that my pores begin to shiver. And then she slinks away from view. I strain my neck right—there's a dresser, solid-looking pans on its shelves. A committed blow from one of those ought to do it. She doesn't look like much, this oil-eyed harpy, a sliver of a human. Assuming she is one. Wait, where'd she go, anyway?Dark, clawed hands reached over my skull, not quite stroking the very ends of my eyelashes. A flash to black. Dead silence. The demo is over and I'm released into the warmth and comfort of buzzing electric lights, smiling faces voicelessly saying: "See?" I'm laughing, almost hysterically—it's a defense mechanism. I could explain the technical side of Kitchen, write a little about its frames per second (a silky smooth 120, running at 1080p) and its DTS surround sound (sensationally suffocating), and how its visuals are hitting new highs of engrossing realism, but all you really need to know is that it's genuinely terrifying. Really. Horrible. I don't know what the plan for it is, whether it'll go on the road in some way, or become an attraction in a museum or gallery of some kind, or a dare-you-I-double-dare-you fixture at a gaming bar, but I do know that its warning of "may contain content inappropriate for children" is one hell of an understatement. And if this is just a taste of what horror can be in the realm of virtual reality, as advancing tech enables deeper and richer interactive experiences, you can count me the fuck out for future adventures. I'll be next door, playing Amnesia. I need the calm.Follow Mike Diver on Twitter.On Motherboard: The Horror Game That Heals