A black computer screen. Before I see anything, I hear a sound that is familiar to those of a particular age: the nostalgic clunk of a VHS tape being loaded into a player, and the soft whirring of the machinery. A title page, bearing the hallmarks of a degraded VHS tape, reads: ANATOMY. At the base of the screen: 8_18_94. The screen freezes, accompanied by a high-pitched buzz.

I am suddenly transported to the foyer of a darkened house. Ahead is a murky hallway. To my left, a doorway; to my right, stairs leading to the second floor. My light source only stretches a few feet into the darkness. With trepidation, I begin to investigate the house.

As I explore, the static of scan lines intermittently rolls up the screen. It should signal to me that the experience is only a fiction, but somehow it adds to its authenticity: my exploration feels like it is simultaneously a recording of sorts.

Soon, I am prompted to make my way into the basement. I open the door and navigate down the stairwell, into an inky blackness broken only by the scan line distortion. It feels as though the edges of the computer screen are lost to me. There is only the basement now, and my anxious journey edging along the walls. I can't risk going to the centre of the room. The light does not reach back to the walls

FEAR IN THE FIRST PERSON

For many who enjoy horror cinema, the lure of horror video gaming is strong. Gone is the frustration of watching protagonists make the wrong decision by fleeing upstairs from the knife-wielding maniac; instead, it is replaced by the more active identification of the player as participant in the diegetic world. Now it is you who will be forced to make the decision to traipse down into the murky basement.

In this chapter I examine the aesthetics of several exemplar works of horror video gaming that operate to produce a defined embodied experience, one that is altered from the dynamics of cinema spectatorship but one that can be explained by drawing from similar foundational approaches.