Hi,
Well that's a complex matter, while Wine overall improves with versions (more apps work better), they're sometimes regressions, specially for games.
For example, while sound subsystem rewrite in 1.3.26 work perfectly and is a no brainer for most games, some worked better with the old subsystem. Or some DirectDraw heavy games work significantly faster with Wine 1.4 than with 1.5.x. That kind of things.
So, that's why PlayOnLinux allows to run each program with a separate version of Wine, and that install scripts use specific settings and tricks to improve the execution of each application,
including the choice of a Wine version. And by using the exact version installed by the script, you're sure to use a combinaison of settings that's known to work for other people.
That said, you may get even better result with Wine versions released after the last script update, for example. It's easily done:
Configure button > (select virtual drive) > General tab > Wine version
You can pick any other version, but not change the architecture (32 or 64bit).
Just keep in mind that newer is not always better.
(For the GOG release of FarCry I used Wine 1.3.36 as it was the first to have perfect water effects rendering).
Edited by petch