So, Kitchen has been kept under-wraps pretty well, having little to no information about it available before I got a chance to fiddle around with it. The wait was long, with a host of folks trying to see what all the fuss was about. Luckily, I was able to get in and test it out. As I sat down in the dilapidated kitchen chair they had prepared for the tech demo, they gave me a brief rundown of what I’d be experiencing.

The guy running the demo was pretty friendly and thorough, working with me to get Sony’s Morpheus headset nice and comfortable on my head. Surprisingly, the thing felt pretty good. It seemed to weigh a bit less than the Oculus Rift, and had plenty of room to accommodate my glasses, which I was grateful for. As he was doing this, he gave me a run-down of what I’d be experiencing.

The fellow warned me that the material in the demo would be very tense, and if at any point I felt uncomfortable, I should simply alert him and he’d remove the headset. Being the Billy Badass that I am, I told him I was a bit of a horror game veteran, to which he responded with a smile and a nod, telling me I’d definitely enjoy the game.

The beginning of the demo was simply a black screen telling me to press any button, which I did. Immediately, I was thrust into, well, a kitchen. However, a sinister vibe hit me almost instantly, and before long I realized just what kind of game this was going to be. The kitchen itself was decrepit at best, looking as if no one had used it in about twenty or thirty years. The first things I noticed were a camera directly in front of me, pointed at my face, and a body lying on the floor to my immediate left.

As the demo started, the game gave me a prompt to shove the controller forward, which I did. This caused me to thrust my hands out, knocking over the camera in front of me. This was clever, as it showed off the motion control, but also revealed that my hands were bound together. I waited around after knocking the camera over for a hot minute, before the body to my left began to stir. It was a man, who stood up, muttering under his breath before grabbing a kitchen knife.

Luckily, he didn’t want to kill me, but rather seemed intent on getting the both of us out of there. Taking the knife in his hands, he began to saw at my bindings with it, which was REALLY uncomfortable, as the blade kept getting increasingly close to me as he sawed away in a hurried manner. If I hadn’t been paying attention, I wouldn’t even have noticed the bloody woman creeping up behind him.

She attacked the man who I assumed to be my savior, wounding him, and he fell to the floor. Almost immediately, the bloodied woman darted forward, getting fairly close to my face and hissing at me. She sunk the knife she now held into my thigh, before taking it out and brandishing it. Just then, she was tackled out of the way by the fellow who’d tried to save me previously.

Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to like that, and made short work of killing him. The last I saw of him was his body being dragged around a corner, and then I heard some gruesome noises of what I assumed to be splattering blood and viscera. Then the game went almost completely silent. I was just sitting there in the room again, frantically looking around to see where the woman had gone.

Not too long after, I began to hear heavy footfalls behind me. This was doubly creepy due to the fact that I could not fully rotate my view around, as I was sitting in a chair. I tried wiggling my hands about, but the bindings were still in place, and there was no way I was escaping them. The footsteps crept closer, and suddenly a pair of bloody hands were placed over my eyes. I heard breathing in my ear, and when the hands were removed, the woman’s face was inches from my own. She smiled, before taking the knife into her hand again and plunging it into my mug.

The demo ended, and my headset was removed. The guy asked how I enjoyed it, and I told him it was awesome, which I still honestly believe. The functionality of the headset in this short tech demo was almost perfect, and the subject material was quite creepy. Coupled with the noise-isolating headphones they placed atop my head, the experience was incredibly immersive overall.

Do I think it will be easy to make such an immersive experience into a full game? Of course not. There is still a long way to go, in my opinion, before AAA studios are making full horror games with this sort of technology. However, this little taste of the future was quite appetizing, and if this tech demo is made available in the future for the Morpheus, I’d recommend anyone who picks the VR set up to give it a try.

The reason there are no screencaps or images in this article is due to Capcom keeping the whole project pretty hush-hush. In my opinion, the experience was pretty intense without knowing what to expect, so I assume that’s why they did it.