Mashing the well-known, meticulous play of Tetris together with some other totally different puzzle game sounds like a recipe for disaster, but Sega's Sonic Team has done just that and made Tetris the most enjoyable it's been in years.

A party-ready puzzle game with heaps of modes and content to keep you busy, Puyo Puyo Tetris introduces Western gamers to an incredibly popular Japanese franchise, while also providing familiarity via its familiar block-falling twist.

For the unfamiliar, Puyo Puyo is an addictive, competitive game that challenges players to match coloured balls of goo in order to clear the screen. Crafty combos send hard-to-remove garbage blocks to opponents, filling matches with tense risk/reward strategies. Outside of this core gameplay, the series is known for its quirky anime-style characters and odd-ball narrative, as well as its various alternative game modes.

While attempts were made to bring an English language version of the puzzle format to Sega and Nintendo platforms in the mid-nineties (disguised as Dr Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine and Kirby's Ghost Trap respectively), none of the main entries in the 25-year-old series have actually made it out of Japan.

Of course Tetris, by contrast, is very well known in Australia and around the world, and this mash-up provides plenty of great ways to play that game alone or with up to three friends. But the real star of the show is the smart way the two games collide.

My favourite mode to play with friends, for example, is Swap. This has players switching between both games at timed intervals, testing their ability to manage both rule-sets and be the last one standing.

Also fun is the classic Versus mode, where each player is free to choose whether they'll compete by playing Tetris or Puyo Puyo. Against all odds, games do feel competitive and cohesive even though the players are playing totally different games, with the Puyo players building towards a massive waterfall of combos and the Tetris players meticulously trying to slot in that last block that will give them a five-line Tetris.

Of course to make the two games compatible with each other some flexibility is required, and the version of Tetris here isn't exactly the same as you may remember from your Game Boy. Fortunately, I think the game is largely improved thanks to its Puyo Puyo influences.

The biggest change is that removing multiple lines at once will send garbage tiles to your opponent, making the incentive to line up a five-liner even greater. Garbage lobbed at you from an opponent will appear as grey tiles at the bottom of your board that must be painstakingly removed lest they force you into a game over.

Many of the other modes, including Party and Fusion, mix the games more directly by having Tetrominos and Puyos appear together on the same game board. This can make for some hectic fun, but is a bit too messy to be as satisfying as the other game styles.

The most surprisingly full-featured mode is the Puyo-Puyo-style Adventure mode, which is fully voiced and introduces a new cast of characters from an alternative dimension where Tetris, not Puyo Puyo, is the world's greatest obsession.

The story's totally daft (as expected), but the characters and performances are charming. Each level sets up a challenge that players will be awarded between one and three stars for completing, so perfectionists will likely spend hours here.

Elsewhere the game even features a range of lessons to teach players the finer points of each game, and an online suite where you can take on the world.

This is certainly a Puyo Puyo game at heart — with chatty cartoon characters and fast-paced competitive fun prioritised over high scores and analytical block-dropping — but Tetris fans shouldn't be too quick to dismiss it. After years of attempts to freshen up Alexey Pajitnov's formula, with incredibly mixed results, this game delivers the most fun puzzle experience to bear the Tetris name in a very long time.

Puyo Puyo Tetris is out now for Nintendo Switch (reviewed) and PlayStation 4.