Over the last couple weeks I have been playing Time Pilot, the $5 XBox 360 Live Arcade game.

In order to unlock the Perfection achievement, a player must beat the first four levels without dying (getting hit once).

When I first started I would pretty much die once per level.  As for level 4, however, I would die multiple times.

Then I developed some strategies.  By continually flying Northeast and shooting, you are pretty much guaranteed to only have to worry about your tail.  This works for the first two levels.  For level 3, I employed the same strategy, but since this level has homing missiles, I wait for them to get about three lengths behind me, then loop in a circle to throw it off, and I continue northeast.  For level 4, which I still kept dying on despite being able to get there flawlessly, I figured out that I needed to loop more often.  Because the fighter jets on level 4 travel the same speed as I do, they will fly beside me and when I need to loop to avoid a homing missile, I will hit the jet and die.  So I started looping more often so that the jets can't fly beside me.

By the time I was able to get the Perfection achievement, I noticed that my score was ranked about 300th in the world out of about 44,000.  So I continued practicing.  What's interesting is that after you beat level 5 (the final level), level 6 is simply level 1 again with the difficulty turned up a little.  Since levels 4 and 5 are the difficult ones, after beating level 5 I am pretty much guaranteed to make it to level 9.

When I made it to level 10 my world ranking was 187th.  Well I knew if I could get past level 10 I would have a good shot of getting to level 14.  So I played a nearly flawless beginning and ended up making it to level 13, racking up a score of about 460K, good for 63rd in the world!