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It's the game that had most people looking for a punchline, but it turns out that Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare is no joke. According to the critics, the EA-published third-person multiplayer shooter based on PopCap's best-selling casual strategy app is a genuinely great game.

"Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare simply doesn't give you an excuse to put the controller down or to keep from picking it up in the first place," says Game Revoltion's five star review. "It takes beloved characters and tosses them into an entirely different dimension. I'm both a shooter and a PvZ fan, but no matter which side you come down on, win, lose, or draw, someone's gotta eat those brains."

Polygon agrees. "The alternately great and weird idea of moving PvZ into the third-person shooter space works," says its 8.5/10 review. "Garden Warfare artfully starts with great shooter chops and uses PvZ to take bold risks with its design, with inspired twists on multiplayer conventions... it takes the best parts of PvZ to make an experimental shooter that feels freed from tired conventions or compromise."

And Eurogamer echoes the praise as well. "It's just expertly made, thoughtfully constructed action whose blue skies and lush lawns make for a welcome aesthetic alternative to this genre's grubby mainstays," says the 8/10 review. "PopCap has overachieved and delivered one of the most likeable games on next-generation hardware anywhere. Quite simply, I dig it."

Our own review is even more excited, saying "The wealth of different characters, customisation options and simplistic controls put it ahead of more complicated shooters" and scoring it a mighty 9/10.

If you're looking for a goofy cartoony shooter that you can play with the family, without skimping on gameplay, it looks like this unlikely mash-up fits the bill perfectly.

Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare is out for Xbox One and Xbox 360 this week. A PC version will follow.