Just a warning, that War in the North has problems with some ATI cards and they never fixed it! :\

As for recommendations:

Warhammer Space Marine: It's a good action/hack and slash game and you really don't need to know much about the Warhammer universe, i borrowed it to a friend who never played a Warhammer game (he doesn't like rts) and he really enjoyed it and now he's a fan of that universe (still not wanting to play the rts, lol).

The Darkness 2 - I enjoyed it, it's not as good as the first but it does have a good gameplay and ok story. Tons of violence! :)

Bulletstorm - It's a good fast action silly fps, good for those times when you don't want to play anything serious.

Condemned - It's much older (2006) from the period that you said (2~3 years old) but i noticed that you didn't had it and you should play it, it's really one of the best horror games out there.

PS - +1 for Stalker recommendation, play Shadow of Chernoby first and then Call of Pripyat (you can skip Clear Sky since it's more of the same in relation to SoC).

PSS - I didn't recommended rts since apparently it's not your thing, but if you want to give it a try go for Warhammer 40K Dawn of War 2 (+ Chaos Rising expansion, you can skip Retribution unless you want to play online) and World in Conflict.

I highly recommend mass effect two. I mean gameplay wise its a 3rd person shooter rpg as always but I think it was the peak of the series. Assassins Creed 2 is probably more beloved but I loved the kill chaining in 3 more. So AC@ for setting exploration but AC3 for the better(to me.) combat.

That's why I just try to own a majority of consoles, then I don't have to mess with it as often. If you can, I think the second game in Assassin's Creed 2 trilogy is the best one, but if you just don't care for the assassination, guard following so forth, go for the 4th. A big part of AC2's new additions is city and base management, which means you'll be hunting money a lot to buy shops to open new equipment for yourself.

It does? With which of them? It played fine on my HD 6770.

If you have eyed the assassin creed games then AC2 and AC Brotherhood are awesome, the AC games after that are only ok.

Really? I've only ever heard one person say V was better than IV, and they said they simply don't like strategy games. Civ IV vanillia is comparable in detail to Civ V Complete, while Civ V just felt very dumbed down after IV. The only improvement V made was the switch to hexes, but it was one step forward and a dozen steps back. Gods & Kings and Brave New World did some damage control, but even with them, it still feels kind of hollow.

Also, you shouldn't take Yahtzee's reviews seriously. Ever. He's a comedian, not a reviewer, they're not meant to be accurate representations of a game, that's not what he's going for at all.

I have never even seen gameplay for a Civ game. Are they like Age of Empires?

That is a really good one. One of my favorites. It is unfortunate that it uses GFWL :(

Another suggestion. This one is a little bit older... If you liked Spec Ops, you might like Brothers in Arms: Hell's highway (2008)
Set in WW2, it is a first/third person shooter that focuses on squad tactics. You are a squad leader that commands between one and three fire teams (depending on the mission.) You have to position them and order them to suppress and flank the enemy to succeed.
It has a really excellent story, and it is told very well. But there is a catch - the story makes very little sense if you haven't played the 2 previous games from 2005. And all three of the games are really poor console ports.

Not even close... Civilization is a turn based strategy, and while warfare is still an important part of the game, I'd say that it's not nearly as important as empire building (whereas I'd say it's the most important part of Age of Empires). You basically start with sticks and stones and build up all sorts of technologies. On top of that, there are multiple win conditions, including space race (be the first to establish an interplanetary colony), conquest/dominion (destroy all enemies or control enough land that you effective control the world), or diplomatic/religious (have the UN or Apostolic Palace declare you world leader).

If you don't mind turn based games, you definitely should look into the series, but if you're looking for an RTS that captures the theme of Civilization, you're better off looking at Rise of Nations or Empire Earth.

Well, what can I say. I don't remember this problem when I played the game two years ago.

Or that actually sounds awesome! I'll have to remember it when I have some more gaming money! I love grow your empire kinda games!

In that case, you might also want to look into Alpha Centauri here on GOG- it's essentially a sequel to Civ series, assuming a space race victory in Civilization. Very similar in concept, though it does have a lot of unique features all its own.

Well I never can get my card accepted so I go through steam. I just prefer GOG's community since I found yall! I plan on using steam games to build my gog ones through trade. Planescape torment was the only game GOG let me buy. I am happy I was persistent with my bank to get that, it rules!

I thought they remove that crap since GFWL no longer exists.

I wish i could say the same but it's one of those cases where i don't mind whatever happens to the company since they lied by promising a patch to fix it and then when people were still complaining about it they just pointed the finger to ATI and started saying some dumb shenanigans when i contacted the support.