I always look in these threads trying to find new apps to get, but in reality, usage changes by user SO HEAVILY that they're kinda silly.
If you want a free magazine, I'd get Huffington, it's pretty nice. I would love to have The Daily, but it's a little pricy for me. I'll occasionally buy a week, but can't justify buying a year, since there are periods of time where I know I won't use it.
I use iBooks more than anything. I suppose that's because I love to read.
Sketchbook Pro is fun, although I don't use it too often.
AVPlayerHD is nice for watching movies without converting them. It handles my 720P mkvs fine.
I use Pages + Keynote regularly as a teacher, and I used them as a college student as well.
Alienblue is nice for Reddit, and CNN has a kinda neat news app although it's not great. Flipboard and Pulse kinda bother me, although some people swear by them. I'd rather subscribe and use the daily.
If you JB, iTransmission is nice for torrent downloading.
RecipeBook is another favorite, it saves recipes from different websites to your iPad, to create your own recipe book with offline use.
Dropbox makes moving things around a lot easier.
I like TWC for weather, the free pricetag makes it especially nice.
As far as games: I played InfinityBlade2 for an hour or so, but couldn't get into it. It makes me a bit sad as it was $5.99 when I got it, but it's cheaper now I think, so at a lower price tag it may be more worth it. Charadium HD is fun, but lost popularity fast, and is full of kids who draw dicks now. Ticket to Ride is great for pass-any-play, although a bit pricy. Monopoly is one of my favorites, since you can do pass-any-play or also just play against bots, and they're quick and fun monopoly games. I have two different GTA games from a sale but I've never opened them haha.
Again, though, it's all about what you want to use your iPad for. I use iBooks more than anything else. I gave my Nook Touch to my little brother to buy a $600 iPad3, and use it mainly for reading. Whoops.