if statement – short circuit evaluation vs readability

One natural solution would look like this:

bool b1 = SomeCondition();
bool b2 = b1 || SomeOtherCondition();
bool b3 = b2 || SomeThirdCondition();
// any other condition
bool bn = bn_1 || SomeFinalCondition();

if (bn)
{
  // do stuff
}

This has the benefits of being easy to understand, being applicable to all cases and having short circuit behaviour.

This was my initial solution: A good pattern in method calls and for-loop bodies is the following:

if (!SomeComplicatedFunctionCall())
   return; // or continue

if (!SomeOtherComplicatedFunctionCall())
   return; // or continue

// do stuff

One gets the same nice performance benefits of shortcircuit evaluation, but the code looks more readable.