Virtual Reality on a Budget: Which Plastic (Cardboard Style) Viewer is Best? (And what games to play on it)

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So you want to try VR, but the Oculus Rift and Vive are unreasonably expensive. I feel you. If you've tried the literal Google Cardboard phone holder and thought "This sucks dick", I agree, but don't judge phone based VR by Cardboard. It may surprise you to learn that there are some Cardboard app compatible plastic viewers out there with high build quality and high optical quality, rivaling the likes of the Gear VR.

Gear VR is for the time being at the top of the phone based VR heap. It has the best mobile games exclusive to it, the optical quality is on part with the DK2 except much higher resolution and the extra sensors built into it give it Rift quality head tracking, just without positional tracking.

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If you just so happen to have one of the select few phones that work with it (Galaxy S6, S7, Note 5, and Note 4 but only for the Gear VR Innovator Edition) then lucky you. Gear VR is the best solution for you at $99, go out and get one. For everybody else, until Google Daydream compatible phones start hitting the market, here are some of the best Gear VR alternatives.

First, the Zeiss VR One GX. It's the latest model, a revision of the VR One with an added magnetic switch many Cardboard games require. At $150 the price is steep, but the quality of the lenses in particular is astonishing. As expected from Carl Zeiss.

The view is clear and crisp, the sweet spot large, and the field of view slightly larger than the Gear's if anything. The only downside is the relatively limited selection of phones it works with. The foam lining fit my face extremely well, the sliding tray mechanism makes getting your phone in and out of it fairly easy and quick, though it means you need to also buy the specific tray that fits your model of phone.

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Then there's the Snail VR. This is my most recommended Cardboard app compatible viewer. It fits damn near any phone you throw at it, it's very fast and easy to get the phone in and out, and the optics are superb. Not quite on the level of the VR One but extremely close.

For $48, it's a steal, and it comes with a detatchable bluetooth controller. This gives you basic movement and selection control in simpler games, you will still want a proper bluetooth dual thumbstick controller to go with it. Another perk is individually focusable lenses, which the VR One doesn't have.

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Next up is the BoboVRZ4, which currently will run you about $32. It has optics on par with the Snail VR , as well as built in headphones. I've heard these are of middling quality but they can be removed so you can wear your own headphones.The flip down front lid also makes removing and inserting your phone more of a hassle than it needs to be, but the main thing is the optical quality, and this is one of the very few headsets where what you actually see inside it rivals the quality of Gear VR, so it warrants inclusion.

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An honorable mention is the Freefly VR. It has a nice wide field of view but I won't recommend it here because it also has an uncommonly narrow sweet spot and the mechanism for getting your phone into and out of it is atrociously complicated and time consuming.

"Why these specific headsets? I see way cheaper ones when I search Amazon" you ask. The reason is that getting the optics right for VR is very hard. Most have failed terribly at it. If you buy the VR Box for instance, you can actually see the plastic walls of the viewer itself when you look into the lenses. You can see the edges of the phone screen. They do not at all match up properly with the predistorted images the phone displays and the lenses are typically the cheapest acrylic shit that was available.

Do not be tempted by these ultra cheap options! You will only be disappointed. VR is not easy. So far only a few players in this market have gotten it right. Now, what games are even fleshed out and worthwhile for Cardboard? It may surprise you to learn there are quite a few now, although of course you will need a bluetooth gamepad to play many of them. Here are my top recommendations:

Cityscape Repairman, one of the most polished, fleshed out games for cardboard. A cute, charming puzzle platformer ported over from the Gear VR in which you must fix various machines to keep the cityscape running.

Proton Pulse, basically 3D breakout but with gradually accumulating gameplay modifiers as you progress through stages.

Vanguard V, a demo of a Starfox style rail shooter. Brilliantly fun, heart pounding music. I know, a demo shouldn't be in a thread about fleshed out games but it's going to be, and it's too rich and chocolatey to omit.

QVR is a mobile VR port of Quake. Not an original game of course but it is complete, fully fleshed out and the only "real" FPS available for mobile VR at the moment. It's racked up more play time for me than the rest of these games combined.

InCell, sequel to the free (and much shorter/simpler) InMind.

Now instead of entering a patient's brain, you've been shrunken further and sent into a human cell to battle viruses. Gameplay is similar to that one F-Zero GX stage where you're racing on the outer surface of a tube and can spin all the way around it.

You must dodge moving barriers, hit boosts, collect protein and later on use projectiles to knock out special barrier rings you cannot otherwise slip through.

Caaaaardboard, the VR version of "AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! A Reckless Disregard For Gravity". Leap from a building and plummet through abstract futuristic vertical cityscapes, dodging obstacles, skimming close to buildings for points, going through hoops, etc.

Hidden Temple VR, a first person point and click adventure/puzzler. Explore a temple, find items, combine them or use them to solve puzzles, gather gold. Really well done imo.

Cyclone 2000, a VR enabled remake of Tempest 2000. There's even an option in the menu to auto-download the original soundtrack, which is of dubious legality but Atari is pretty much dead at this point.

Lamper VR: Firefly Rescue is dead simple but very polished. Made by Fibrum, it's included in place of Lamper: First Flight as it is in all ways a big improvement. Costs nothing to download but you can't get terribly far without either being exceedingly good at it or buying stuff.

A basic behind the character rail flying game controlled exclusively by head motion. Collect charge pods to keep Lamper alive. Collect fireballs to survive 1 hit from enemies. Collect magnets to attract nearby items, arrows for a short speed boost and so on. Fibrum's apps usually rub me the wrong way as they're sort of Gamelofty; very slick looking but designed to milk you for cash, with not much actual depth in the end.

I'm letting this one slide because Fibrum also does a great job of making visually appealing VR games with consistently high framerates even on not so new devices, and this one doesn't come at you to pay for it right away.

Nighttime Terror is one of those dual thumbstick shooters ala Geometry Wars but with a spooky toys theme. Rather than aim with the second thumbstick, you aim where you're looking, which works pretty well. Well done textures and models, music is fitting but grated on me pretty quick.

Nebuland is an abstract, colorful, indescribable puzzle game. Yes, it's a sort of point and click puzzle adventure. You use the magnetic slider to click indescribable things, which makes something happen, then creating the conditions to click elsewhere and make a new thing happen. Just try it, it's disappointingly short but mind blowing.

Hardcode VR is pretty bare bones currently but I'm including it in this list because it's the most complete and promising third person platformer/shooter for cardboard atm and has basic but fun wifi multiplayer. This game shows how to do third person platforming and shooting correctly in this format and should be closely studied by devs making something similar.

Bomb Squad VR The already widely popular, wifi multiplayer capable Bomb Squad but playable in VR. The closest thing that exists right now to an AAA mobile VR title that isn't exclusive to Gear VR. Highly recommended.

End Space is included here despite being very simple just because it's the best space shooter for cardboard right now. That isn't saying much. There are some quality space shooters on Gear VR but for cardboard, for the time being, End Space is as good as it gets. Models are good, texturing is good, gameplay is good, there's just not much substance. Fly around, destroy fighters, destroy carriers, collect health/ammo refills and single use powerups, then do it all again in a different skybox.

Galaxy VR is a multiplayer enabled space shooter with independent head tracking and gamepad control of the ship, a modest variety of stages, comfort turning and some much appreciated in depth customization options in the menu. Still in demo, as are many of these.

Fractal Combat X is a wonderful jet fighter game. It's set in the far future, you fight on alien worlds but never in space, always within an atmosphere. The terrain is fractally generated and looks great, hence the title. Unlike End Space or Galaxy VR, there's an actual structure here, with successive levels you must beat to progress through, an upgrades shop, a new jet shop, pre and post mission briefings, all that good stuff.

Sinister Edge is the very best horror game currently. There are various other abortive attempts like House of Terror or Halls of Fear, but they're like what you find when scraping the bottom of the barrel at gamejolt's horror section. Sinister Edge is a proper first person horror title requiring a gamepad for movement and interaction. You explore a mansion, solve puzzles (most of which are just find item use item but a few of which are innovative, requiring you to use various VR specific motions) and there's some semblance of a story. The graphics are decent, gameplay is good, this is among the very few cardboard titles that feels like a real polished game. My only complaint is that it's fairly short.