Yippee, I came up with a fun, alliterative title for this series! Anyway, off to the rant:
So far, the routes haven't had a level that's extremely abysmal. Central City's layout is confusing and annoyingly blends Hero and Dark objectives into a clusterfuck and Black Comet drags, but I came upon one of the first of two utterly dreadful levels: The Space Colony ARK flashbacks. Levels so bad, they're on par with Mad Space as my most loathed levels in Sonic history. All 3 a personal hell of their own! Would you rather hunt down 35 Artificial Chaos in a massive map spanning multiple slow on rail shooting sections? Or would you rather kill 60 motherlovin' GUN Soldiers spread out in thin numbers across an equally larger and obnoxious map? It's truly a game of pick your poison!
I'm far and away from doing the Hero path of this mission, which involves healing 10 wounded NPCs also spread throughout its colossal map. The Doom and Lost Impact are truly a circle of Hell on their own, and I loathe knowing the next few routes are asking me to play this godforsaken level. Glancing at the end of the library sequences, Lost Impact makes up the last handful of them! Suffer long and it will set you free, says Mike Szuter in the game's hero ending theme. Well, I'm suffering long, but there ain't a sight of freedom yet.