Guitar Hero Download Low-Down: Coldplay Track Pack

Whenever Guitar Hero releases fresh tracks via Xbox Live, we'll run out onto our website stage like roadies and review the latest downloadable content. Check back often!

The Coldplay Track Pack contains three songs for 500 Microsoft Points ($6.25). The tracks are not available for individual sale. 

WHAT ROCKS: If you’ve been looking for a few songs to cough up easy note streaks on Expert, here you go. The newest track, “Violet Hill,” sounds a bit like a cowboy ballad, with some crunchy guitars and a slightly maudlin melody. The guitar riffs are not complicated or fast, but they are mildly challenging on Expert, with several instances of a green-orange power chord and a spry, short solo. Oddly, it ends in a piano riff, but this isn’t the first time we’ve been asked to play keyboard on guitar — no points off for that.

WHAT SUCKS: “Yellow” is like a lullaby with stabs of distortion; a steady tempo and simple two-chord strums on the beat for most of the song keep it too simple to be enjoyable as gameplay -- the song puts you into a light trance and lacks enough note density to keep you interested. And despite a slightly sinister-sounding descending main riff, “God Put A Smile Upon Your Face” offers the most driving backbeat and a sprightly bassline, but it goes nowhere on guitar and gets there slowly, ultimately degenerating to a single-note repetitive run — on Expert. Also, it’s patently ridiculous to see the high-wattage lightshow and hear the crowd losing its mind over a completely mellow performance.The band describes its atmospheric music as “very heavy soft rock” — and if this is the best interactive implementation of that genre, it's not good enough.

FINAL VERDICT: Shh…don’t wake the Guitar Hero players! Coldplay has put them all to sleep. The problem of uninteresting note charts can be traced to the music itself; Coldplay's reserved energy just doesn't lend itself to the gonzo Guitar Hero III treatment.