1 Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is the latest instalment of the wildly popular sandbox adventure series. In Chinatown Wars you play the role of Huang Lee, spoiled son of a recently murdered Triad boss who just got off the plane in Liberty City to deliver a family heirloom to your uncle “Kenny”.

From here you will embark on an epic tale of crime and corruption as you try to try to find your feet in the crime-ridden city and someday avenge your father’s death. This is arguably one of the best iPhone games there is, so just go and buy it right now.

2 Cogs

Cogs is a puzzle game that requires you to slide a set of tiles on a machine in both 2D and 3D planes to bring a piece of machinery to life. Each level presents you with an increasingly mind-bending contraption composed of cogs, pipes and other gears. Your goal is to arrange them in such a way that the machine works.

This is not your run-of-the-mill puzzler and will require you to get your cerebral juices flowing. The end result is a great sense of accomplishment. Once you have completed all 50 levels, which is no small feat, you can attempt the ‘Challenge Mode’ to complete the puzzles within a time limit or set number of moves.

3 Assassin’s Creed II Discovery

Assassin’s Creed II Discovery is a spin-off of the popular adventure series from Ubisoft. You assume the role of Ezio Auditoire de Firenze, an aristocrat and an elite assassin from the Italian renaissance whose journey will take you to 15th century Spain to rescue some fellow assassins being held captive by the Inquisition. Along the way, you uncover a Templar plot to set sail west to discover the New World and only you stand in their path.

4 Met Office Weather application

The Met Office has been providing Britons with weather information since the dawn of time. So it should come as no surprise they now have an official app for the iPhone to let you know all about how miserable your day is going to be. While the stock weather app on the iPhone is fairly competent, it doesn’t provide as much detailed information as the Met Office app, which includes five-day forecasts, national severe weather alerts, satellite imagery of the UK weather and more.

5 Good Food Guide 2010

The Good Food Guide is Britain’s best-selling printed restaurant guide and now you can access it right from your iPhone to find the finest culinary establishments throughout the UK. In addition to reading the entire guide with full reviews, you can use the GPS to find restaurants near you, visit a restaurant’s website directly from the app, write your own reviews and even tweet or email suggestions to your friends.

6 Spore Creatures

Spore Creatures is a sequel to one of the first ‘true’ iPhone game, Spore Origins, where players chronicled of the evolution of a micro-organism into a full-blown underwater creature. In Spore Creatures, your creature is now out of the primordial swamp and ready to explore dry land where you must help it to survive the new challenges it faces with the ultimate goal of climbing up the evolutionary ladder. Playing Darwin has never been more fun!

7 Metro UK

Metro UK is the official app from the popular Metro newspaper distributed freely in stations throughout London and other major cities in the UK. So at last you no longer have to fight off your fellow commuters to grab that last, abandoned copy of the newspaper and then endure the discomfort of trying to read it with all five inches of space on the Central Line. You can either read your news ‘live’ using an active internet connection or downloaded straight to your phone. Welcome, to the 21st century.

8 Timelines

Timelines is a time logging app that allows you to keep track of your time using an intuitive interface. Simply tap to pick a ‘timecode’ and tap again to initiate that timecode.

You can view colour-coded bar charts of your ‘timesheet’ to see an overview of your time spent and ‘notes’ to help you see exactly what you did on a given day. All reports are produced in HTML, which you can easily export, print off or send by email. This is a very useful tool to have if you are involved in projects that require efficient time keeping.

9 Bridge Odyssey

Bridge Odyssey is a colourful puzzle-based platformer from Gameloft where you must construct bridges between platforms to help a bunch of cute little animals cross from side to the other. The twist is that you have limited resources with which you must construct a bridge strong enough to withstand the weight of the crossing animals. The controls are simple, the concept is particularly original and it's loads of fun to play. What's not to like?

10 Space Invaders Extreme

Space Invaders Infinity is a reimagination of the popular arcade classic from Taito where you take control of a laser canon to shoot down wave after wave of alien ships descending upon your planet. Infinity takes the tried and tested formula of its precursor and gives it a fresh coat of paint with vector-based graphics complimented by techno beats and straightforward controls that anyone can pick up and play.

Although this one came out toward the very of end of 2009, we felt it was overshadowed somewhat in the Christmas rush. Hopefully, inclusion in the first of our monthly round-up of the best iPhone apps will help it get the audience it deserves.