Orn Malik for GigaOM is shocked that terrible free game Cut the Birds (which manages to simultaneously rip off Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja) ended up on the App Store. I’m not. Despite reports that Apple’s policing of the store is draconian, it’s anything but these days. It’s commonplace to see IP rips on the store, and I’ve chanced upon lifts from Pac-Man, Mario and other famous brands.

Generally, Apple’s pretty good at removing infringing properties when challenged (and that was even the case with an indie dev I know whose game and game name were stolen wholesale), and it’s tough to think what Apple should be doing instead. It could act as more of a gatekeeper, rejecting more IP that obviously infringes, but such action is likely to be inconsistently applied, and most likely to only protect big companies by default. Furthermore, it’s not like Apple’s alone in this—myriad cases of IP theft also exist on the Android Marketplace, for example.

Still, that such blatant IP theft has made it to the App Store does no-one any favours, not least SolverLabs (amusing strapline: “The world class software labs”—OHO!), who may find themselves minus one iOS dev account once Apple’s team lumbers into view.

So you’ve got yourself a shiny new iPhone 4S and you want to immerse yourself in the world of iOS gaming. What should you buy? Dozens of sites will be banging on about the latest SHINY SHINY for the device (read: pretty graphics, gameplay a little like eating chalk), or, with an alarming lack of imagination, suggest you buy Angry sodding Birds, Angry sodding Birds Film Tie-In and Angry sodding Birds Slightly Different Because Rovio Was Fed-Up Giving Chillingo Money, and semi-randomly fire miffed avians at spherical green pigs until your eyes glaze over. Me? I have a slightly more alternative take on the best iOS games, so here’s my quickfire selection of what you should buy—and why:

Axe in Face
As a horticulturally obsessed Viking, you must defend your daffodils against uncaring foes. Imagine Flight Control merged with Plants vs. Zombies, with a bit of Pythonesque humour, and you’re there. It’s short, but very sweet.

Beyond Ynth
You’re a bug with a plan: get to the other end of each level. That’d be easy if each level wasn’t full of boxes that you need to carefully flip and manipulate to get anywhere. Part puzzle-game, part platformer, but all really good, challenging fun.

Bit Pilot
The best of the avoid ’em ups. For some reason, an idiot pilot’s strayed into an enclosed area of space with a worrying number of asteroids. Your task is to keep him alive for as long as possible before his inevitable death. Lovely retro graphics and crunchy chip tunes enhance the addictive gameplay.

Bubble Pets
This one’s a demented retro-themed Whac-a-Mole game. The chunky visuals are great and the game is both furiously demanding and very playable.

Dark Nebula — Episode 2
There are tons of tilt-based labyrinth games on iOS, but this one betters them all. The game is beautiful (despite its lack of Retina graphics), with an imaginative mix of pulp sci-fi and organic forms. The controls are perfectly balanced. The best thing, though, is that each level brings new challenges, forcing you to adapt to new foes and environments. The original Dark Nebula is also very much worth a look.

Drop7
A proper puzzle game, designed to make you think (versus, say, ‘fling things at things’ or ‘drop moving stuff into a well’). The concept is simple: drop numbered discs into a grid, knowing a disc explodes when its number matches the number of discs in its row and/or column. It’s all about thinking ahead and chain reactions, and while the game is unpolished, it’s totally engaging.

Dungeon Raid
A hugely addictive mash-up of path-based match gaming, strategy and basic RPG overtones. If you’re a fan of Puzzle Quest, this is similar but better and far more focussed.

Eliss
This one’s a bit divisive, but I love it. The game is entirely dependent on superb multi-touch controls, tasking you with splitting, joining and trashing planets. It’s tough, and each level requires a unique approach, but if it clicks, you’ll find it one of the best titles on the platform.

Flight Control
The original path-drawing game, where you drag aircraft in to land on like-coloured landing strips. It’s also still one of the best in the genre, due to its mix of balanced gameplay, polished graphics and well-designed maps.

Forget-Me-Not
Hugely addictive mash-up of Pac-Man, Rogue and a number of other retro-style arcade games. The aim is to eat flowers, grab a key and make it to the exit, but myriad enemies think otherwise. The entire game’s a free-for-all, where the monsters aren’t out to get you, but to get everything. Later levels therefore turn into a chaotic battle for survival, making even the toughest Pac-Man mazes appear placid by comparison. Three game modes add further value.

Goat Up
My favourite of the iOS vertical platformers (read: games like Doodle Jump). Here, you’re a goat, aiming to survive in a relentlessly scrolling world comprising nightmarish retro game scenarios. Here, Miner Willy duffs up goats. Chilling. Get your own back by ‘kissing’ male goats, eating grass and having multicoloured kids, a string of which acts like a whip to take down foes. And, yes, this is an odd game, but it’s by Llamasoft, so what did you expect?

Grim Joggers
Endless running and jumping game Canabalt was a big hit on the web and iOS, but this one’s better. It’s a similar game, but you instead control a string of 15 joggers through perilous landscapes (War! Aliens! Polar bears!). Loads of humour and replay value.

Helsing’s Fire
A neat puzzle game with a unique approach, having you use dynamic light and shadow to destroy spooky creatures with potions. The main story mode is enlivened further by Hellboy-style comic cut-scenes.

iBlast Moki 2
Mokis are lazy sods, but, handily, are also bomb-proof. Your aim: use a small selection of bombs to get the Mokis to each level’s exit. Initially, this is pretty simple, but you soon end up building crazy contraptions, such as steampunk rubber-duck-piloted wooden bikes. And, yes, you read that right.

Infinity Blade
This one is my biggest concession to SHINY SHINY in this list, since the game is gorgeous. You play as a knight aiming to take down a tyrant. The game itself is virtual swordplay that’s a bit like Punch-Out!! crossed with Soul Calibur. The RPG-style levelling up is a bit grind-oriented, but this is always a good game for a quick quest.

Joining Hands
An adorable and original puzzle game where you link multi-armed creatures, so they can avoid being devoured by a bogeyman. When you win, the creatures all jump for joy and unlink, at which point they’re presumably devoured, the idiots.

Karoshi
This amusingly twisted single-screen platform/puzzle game had me hooked until I finally managed to crack it. Some of the levels, all of which have you kill a depressed salaryman, are sadistic, requiring some seriously lateral thinking. The WarioWare-style minigame (Live! Kill yourself!) is also great.

Magnetic Billiards
More or less ‘reverse billiards’. The aim here is to spang magnetic balls around a table, aiming to link as few like-coloured ones each turn as possible. The more shots, bounces and close shaves you get, the higher your score. Original and compelling stuff.

Master of Gomoku
A great take on connect-five, with plenty of options and a decent AI opponent for if you have no friends.

Monsters Ate My Condo
Sort-of Jenga meets match-three chaining, smashed into dazzling and bonkers Japanese-style cartoons. Will possibly break your brain.

Mos Speedrun
Platform games don’t work on iOS, I’m told. That probably comes as news to this game, which is like a mini time-attack Mario. Collect coins, don’t die and get to the end. A ‘badge’ system rewards repeat plays, with you getting one each for completing a level within the tight time limit, collecting all the coins, finding a hidden skull, and just for getting to the end.

Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit
A surprising number of racing games on iOS are po-faced and demand tedious grinding through boring races. This one is like arcade racers of old: fast, fun and flashy. You get head-to-head battles, Chase H.Q.-style car-smashing, and can play as the fuzz or a nasty crim.

Orbital
Very pretty one-thumb precision shooter where you shoot expanding balls and aim to make huge chain reactions.

Osmos
Like Eliss, Osmos seems perfectly suited to iOS, although it’s a bit more forgiving (at least initially); it’s also a unique, beautiful physics-based arcade game, where your aim is to grow your ‘mote’ by having it eat smaller motes. Levels seem to switch from microscopic combat to battles on a galactic scale, and the controls, visuals and concept are nigh-on perfect.

Par Out Golf
This isn’t really golf—it’s instead one of the few games to do something really interesting with the path-drawing concept Flight Control introduced. You get a bunch of top-down courses and must draw a route to the hole. The problem: as soon as you touch the screen, clouds swoop in, forcing you to carefully remember where the hazards are.

Pinball HD for iPhone
Three great feature-packed pinball tables with multiple viewpoints. Spang!

Quarrel Deluxe
More or less what would happen if Risk and Scrabble snuck off for a fling and later had a kid with a boatload more character than either parent. Play as mini ninjas, spacemen and other cute avatars, taking down opponents by making words out of an odd jumble of letters.

Saucelifter
A beautiful, challenging Choplifter variant that amusingly subverts the genre. Here, the humans are the evil ones and have captured your alien chums—it’s your job to reduce them, without blowing too many of your pals to bits.

Sheep Goes Left
This amusing and challenging arcade game stars a sheep who likes going left. Unfortunately for him, left involves dozens of screens that feature objects that impale sheep. Clearly, he should have gone right.

Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing
Kart racing on iOS is a surprisingly dreadful experience much of the time. That’s why I was so surprised Sega got this game right. There are two seriously duff tracks, but everything else is great: controls, graphics, courses, AI. It’s not quite MarioKart good, but it’s close.

Space Invaders Infinity Gene
Space Invaders evolved, with more than a hint of Rez. The game starts off as the late-1970s classic, but rapidly flings itself through the history of the genre, eventually pitting you against vector-based bullet-hell. Essential.

Strategery
Marvellous streamlined take on Risk. The computer AI is initially challenging, but the real win is the asynchronous multiplayer mode. Probably my favourite iOS game of all. (I’m ‘craiggrannell’ if you fancy a battle.)

Super Stickman Golf
Another not-golf game—this one’s side-on mini-golf on oddball courses, and it plays a lot like an artillery game. Some of the courses are insanely difficult to complete on par, but mercifully there’s an in-app purchase ‘whole game’ unlock.

Tappi Bear All in 1
Eight simple mini-games, featuring a cartoon bear with dead eyes. If you can deal with that, you’ll have lots of fun flinging doughnuts at ninjas, saving chicks from evil bears, and, er, doing a dance workout.

Trainyard
Utterly chuffing fantastic puzzle game. The basics: direct trains to like-coloured stations. The problems: rocks, colour-mixing demands, not enough room. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s the best puzzle game on the system and a bargain. Buy it or I don’t want to talk to you.

World of Goo HD
It’s certainly not an iOS exclusive, but World of Goo works better on the touchscreen than on a PC or Wii. The Goo world is beautiful and surreal, the game, tasking you with getting Goo balls to Goo Heaven by way of building structures, is engaging and engrossing, full of heart and humour.

ZOOKEEPER DX
The best match game on the DS comes to iOS and it’s even better than the original. Probably best avoided if you don’t want to lose your entire life to dealing with blocky animals and a mental zoo owner.

So, there you go. 37 games, which, if I’ve done my sums right will set you back £54.13 (or $79.63, or some other amount of money if you’re not in the UK or US). And yet every one of these titles has given me many hours of first-rate gaming, which is why I keep banging on about iOS being a fantastic and high-value platform for gaming. But, you know, carry on buying 50-quid epic 3D disappointments on other systems if you want to. *grumble*

ANYWAY, for more iOS gaming stuff from me, follow @iphonetiny on Twitter and check out my games reviews in Tap! magazine. And if you’ve any recommendations for top iOS games that I’ve not covered, please comment!

Developer: Oh, man, I’ve got this great idea for a new game!

Boss: Does it include birds that happen to be angry?

Developer: Um, no.

Boss: You’re fired. Oh, and please help yourself to Angry Birds merchandise on your way out—we need to get rid of it to fit in more piles of money.

Stuart Dredge reports from Nokia World for The Guardian, where Rovio’s marketing chief Peter Vesterbacka was talking Angry Birds:

We’re really excited about making the Angry Birds experience available to the world. We can reach totally new audiences in India, in Africa and all the emerging markets.

Angry Birds: Solves World Poverty edition.

We’re really excited about that. We have 400 million-plus downloads, but hopefully we can add another 400 million together with Nokia in the next few months.

Angry Birds: Making Yet More Money From The Same Old Shit edition.

We haven’t seen ourselves as a games company for a long time…

Angry Birds: Don’t Expect Us To Ever Make Anything Other Than Angry Birds Because We Like Rolling Naked In Money edition.

We’ve now sold over 10 million plush toys, so a million a month, and we also have other products: board games, card games, and we’ve recently launched our first book.

Angry Birds: Not Even Restricted To A Sodding Screen Any More edition.

You can expect to hear more about Rovio books in the not-too-distant future. We’re building the first entertainment brand on the planet with a billion fans. Right now we have 400 million downloads, but we’re only getting started.

Angry Birds: You Will Never Be Rid Of Us edition.

We have 70 million unique users on our HTML5 game online, so we’re deeply versed in HTML5. For us it’s not so much about the technology, it’s about using whatever is there to create the best possible experience for our fans.”

Angry Birds: Just Wait Until We Take Over Facebook, Too edition.

You can expect to see other Angry Birds games, just like Mario. When Mario drives a car, it becomes Mario Kart. When he goes to space, it becomes Super Mario Galaxy… Our birds will do things and go places, and they will go to unexpected places. And some of those places will turn out to be games.

Angry Birds: And You Thought We’d Milked These Characters Enough, But You Really Have No Idea edition.

Still, great to see Rovio being a leading games developer by innovating off of the back of its success, eh? So, let’s all look forward to the exciting, original, inventive Angry Birds Tennis, Angry Birds Kart, Super Angry Birds, Angry Birds 2, Super Angry Birds 2, Dr. Angry Birds, Angry Birds Teach Typing, Angry Birds Teach You How To Cook Pork, Angry Birds Golf, Angry Birds 3, Angry Birds Paint, Angry Birds Are Missing (Only Joking—They Are Fucking Everywhere), Angry Birds All-Stars, Angry Birds Time Machine, Angry Birds Party, Angry Birds Puzzle Collection, Angry Birds Baseball, Angry Birds: GTA, and Angry Birds Classic.

The Loop quotes The Seattle Times, interviewing Gabe Newell, head of Valve:

Newell expects Apple to disrupt the living room platform with a new product that will challenge consoles, although he doesn’t have any particular knowledge of that new product.

“I suspect Apple will launch a living room product that redefines people’s expectations really strongly and the notion of a separate console platform will disappear,” he said.

I don’t think Apple will offer a new product specifically for gaming, because the building blocks already exist in AirPlay and iOS devices. Firemint’s recently showed off Party Play for Real Racing 2, which works over AirPlay to an Apple TV, enabling four-player split-screen racing on an HDTV, using iOS devices as controllers.

Here’s how I think things will play out for Apple in 2012:

• The next iPod touch revision will include an A5 chip and, with that, video mirroring/AirPlay gaming support;
• The Apple TV will retain its price point or perhaps even drop in price;
• More games devs will take advantage of AirPlay, offering TV modes and multiplayer.

You then end up in an interesting and seemingly somewhat absurd reversal of traditional gaming. With Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, you have affordable consoles and fairly cheap controllers. With Apple, you have a cheap ‘console’ (the Apple TV, priced similarly to the Wii, but cheaper than an Xbox or PS3), and expensive ‘controllers’, in the shape of iPods, iPhones and iPads. The Apple system isn’t one you’d buy from scratch, but once you realise families will increasingly own several iOS devices, Apple’s system becomes less crazy.

I’m not sure Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will be significantly challenged by this model, should my three assumptions come to pass, but then people argued iOS wouldn’t get anywhere in handheld gaming, and it’s since punched the DS and PSP squarely in the face.