it really heavily depends on what you're playing, and how willing you are to google(/ddg) your way through issues. in escalating order of difficulty (on linux mint at least):
basically all steam games work; there's a fiddly setting in there to make everything run through proton, even the supposed "windows only" games. this is a simple "how do i make steam games run on linux" search and a setting toggle. (steam deck, their console, uses a linux OS natively, so they're all set up for emulation)
if it works easily with wine, you fish through the folders for the exe, double click on it, and you're gold.
what doesn't run through wine or proton will run on a virtual machine running windows. a little difficult to set up the first time (there are tutorials) but once it's set up it's like 2 clicks. also you will need a not-ancient machine for this which may be prohibitive.
it's an adventure getting some emulators to work and sometimes you have to do the digital equivalent of balancing a cup of coffee on the terminal to do it, but i've been able to manage most of them. however that search engine might be getting a fucking workout for this one.
if it doesn't work immediately with wine, that's 20-50 search engine searches and an increasingly complicated number of fixes, but that's only really a problem if you're running the most esoteric games known to man or pirating.
ime it works fine for gaming but you gotta be kinda persistent about it if you go off the beaten path.
