This week's slate of Xbox Marketplace deals is a bit more random than recent selections - instead of one company delivering discounts for a particular franchise, we've got a handful of developers providing sales for tenuously-related games. Major Nelson is calling it "Mutants and More," and we're calling these the best of the deal of the week!

NOT FOR:
Despite the "mutant" theme, we can think up a handful of freak-filled games that aren't discounted. Off the top of our heads, there's the first TMNT game on XBLA and the two Mutant Storm games. That's not even taking into account the games that star suspected mutants like 'Splosion Man, Earthworm Jim, Super Meat Boy, Wik and the Fable of Souls, Altered Beast, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, and the most offensive mutant of late, Duke Nukem.

FOR QUALITY-SEEKERS:
Most of the Mutant-themed games available for sale are in the mid-60 to mid-70 range on Metacritic. However, with an average score of 85 on the review score aggregator, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is definitely the critic's choice of this week's batch.

FOR THRIFTY 360 OWNERS:
Three of the five games on sale are half-price at $5 (400 MS Points). One of those three originally released at $15, so we're going to call the former 1200-pointer Comic Jumper the biggest price drop of the week.

THE ACHIEVEMENT SEEKER'S CHOICE:
Most of this week's cheap games are rather easy to notch Achievements in. Two-thirds of the games can be maxed out within six hours, with Lara Croft taking roughly a dozen. The toughest game of the bunch is undoubtedly Hard Corps: Uprising, which is pegged as a 20 hour-plus ride to perfection, earning a difficulty level of 7/10 on Xbox360Achievements.org. The easiest game of the bunch is X-Men Arcade, which earned a 2/10 difficulty level on the site (the other four games were each graded a 5/10). According to the Achievement Guide, it should only take between two and three hours to get every X-Achievement!

 
FOR THOSE LOOKING FOR POSSIBLE DIGITAL RARITIES:
With an average score of 60, the botched remake of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time makes a case for being deemed the worst of the deal of the week. However, it may soon be the rarest game of the bunch, as Ubisoft noted to Joystiq that the publishing rights for the game expire on June 30. We're not sure if that extends to the Xbox 360, but Major Nelson himself is investigating the curious circumstances. We'll update this part of the article when we find out the deal on this deal.

FOR NEXT WEEK:
Next week's pickins (also on MajorNelson.com) are far slimmer. Skip over the slightly discounted Rock Band Album (yawn), the achievement-free map pack for Medal of Honor (double yawn), and the expansion for Dante's Inferno that adds a piddling 40 points to the game's overall Gamerscore bounty. Both of the discounted games (Stacking and Torchlight) are very good games, but Stacking has a slightly higher Metacritic score, a slightly lower price, and is one of the easiest games to max out Achievements in, so it gets the duke for the July 5-11 discount period.

Have you purchased any of the content already and want to give a recommendation? Do you disagree with any of our choices? Sound off in the comment section below, respond to our Facebook post, or reply to us on Twitter!