Depending on what you dislike about the UI, you can probably make it more to your liking by using a different launcher (Nova is the one I use). It lets me make

Depending on what you dislike about the UI, you can probably make it more to your liking by using a different launcher (Nova is the one I use). It lets me make one or two minor changes to bring things more in line with my preferences but otherwise is just as fluid as the stock Google launcher. Cyanogen is fine and has some nice features if they apply to your personal usage but the thing about games wanting to log into your Google account would likely be the same. It's the equivalent of Apple's game center or whatever it's called. It's basically a universal login for games so you can keep progress/settings saved across devices. I haven't found any yet that require it but typically it's an opt-in thing if you care about that functionality. I've only ever been asked to sign in on first run of a newly installed game so it's not nearly as obnoxious as the ones that constantly pester you to connect with Facebook or some other thing that's completely unrelated. On a Google phone I can understand using Google's games framework for your game profile but it's annoying to assume I want to use an unrelated service (Facebook) or even have an account with them.