[Wine] help with getting started

[fracta]

I have installed wine and direct x and winetricks but I still can't get any games to run flawlessly, and I know it is possible. 
I am still quite new to linux but I learn quick.
A lot of my problems are things (buildings, monsters, guns) not showing up in game.
If this was windows, I would assume I had missed installing something.
Is there a basic list of things I should do to get things working or something like that? I am just not sure where to look specifically. 
I am not asking for the exact solution to my problems, just where to look, and whether I've missed out installing something or configuring obvious.