Abuse Your Own Adventure - Episode 2: You Gonna Wash Your Hands?

Originally recorded: June 28, 2026 --- Well, that could've gone a lot better. You'd think a second run would've been smoother, but alas, it wasn't meant to be. Either way, I did manage to handle the outliers first and foremost. At this point, I'm pretty much doing reconnaissance on the quickest routes for the repeats. Since I'm pretty much locked into doing each of the "five routes" twice, to get both of their associated endings. Either way, I've done all of the extremes and it looks like normal routes generally just require you to finish the stage normally... which should be way easier than the secondary objective bullcrap I've had to subject myself to thus far. I think the worst stage in this session was Central City. While Digital Circuit was a technicolor nightmare of overstimulating visuals coupled with slippery controls, I never do all that well at timed scavenger hunts... especially when you don't have any sort of map or radar or any clues about where to look. The only upside here is that all of the objectives remained in the same exact location. So, it was just a matter of memorizing the layout and seeking out the stuff I couldn't find last time. To make matters worse, pivoting to the alternate mission probably would've been way harder. By comparison, the last two stages of this run weren't quite as bad. Honestly, I think the G.U.N. Station -- the final level of this batch -- was the easiest of the bunch. The boss fight against Sonic and Diablon was harder to figure out than the one against Black Doom. Fortunately, I think I've managed to get a handle on it... so it shouldn't be so difficult the next two times I have to do it. Honestly, it just sort of got tedious after I figured out how it works. A major timesink. I wasn't expecting different music at the credits. I was originally going to just try and skip them to save a little time, but I wanted to hear the new song. I figure I'll handle subsequent playthroughs like that. If the music's something I've heard before, I'll ignore it. Otherwise, I guess I'll just rock out to it again. Seriously, that "Almost Dead" song was dope as Hell. Why have I never heard it before? Next route is going to be pure neutral. I'm hoping that speeds things up a bit and it allows me to at least get a head start on the next route after that, which is either going to be Semi-Hero or Semi-Dark. Once I've handled all five of the major routes, I'll loop back around and do the rest of everything. I'm really going to have to study that flow chart to speed things up, because if anything just involves finishing a level normally... I'm hoping that'll speed things up something fierce.