http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18762
--- Comment #11 from Jon Rosen holy.smoking.floorboards.batman@gmail.com 2009-06-09 01:42:18 --- Thanks to some suggestions on the Wine forums, I was finally able to pinpoint a resolution for this problem. Turns out that by disabling the 'fidelity' setting (setting it to '0' (zero)) in the game's configuration file fixes this whole problem (the game plays as I had expected it to and the 'err:ntdll:RtlpWaitForCriticalSection' disappears) I played the game for a little while after it loaded and in about a 20 minute time frame the error did not appear at all.
As far as I can tell, the only thing turning 'fidelity' off does is disable terrain damage. I have no idea what else I could look at to help pinpoint a more specific cause for this error to have occurred, but I can say that the other individual who was originally able to play this game well (and who has an identical Wine installation/Platform) had this function enabled (set to '2'). That individual's computer has the same nVidia drivers as I do, but a newer card, so I wonder if this is a hardware thing? If there is anything else I can do to help test this, please let me know as I wouldn't mind spending more time on this to figure out the root cause.