Duke Nukem Total Meltdown - Plug 'n' Pray secrets
Guide by Xoanon, April 21 2019
Whooptydoo my first FAQ here after like 20 years
***Nightmare Zone*** Raiding Tombs and Taking Names!
This one's the hardest map, and the secrets take the longest to
explain. There are a number of hidden switches in this level – behind
vents or on the back of walls or pillars. Some of these are used to
raise platforms for jumping on in rooms. Others help open paths.
1. Drop down into the chasm before you.
You'll take a lot of damage, and there are two drones down here.
But there are two big health bottles and a Devastator.
Use it, or the explosion from a drone, to open a nearby crack in the
wall - on the far right wall if you're looking the same way you
started on the map, towards the big doors. Follow the path it opens
through to a secret lower area and an elevator back up. Good luck with
this, this is tough to not die right off the bat!
There is a button hidden behind a wall to the left of the elevator
that takes you out of this room. It unlocks a teleporter in a later
secret, so press it!
2. If you take the rocky path up on the left of the room past the big
doors, you'll hit a few octobrains, then you can cross a fast stream
to a switch. this opens a door below, and it closes quickly. That door
has a few laser tripwires behind it. In the cave room outside that
door, a crack in the wall can be blown open into a secret area.
There's a single pipebomb in the water nearby and a box of them
further in the water, if you have none left. The crack opens to a path
with an RPG, and then a room with a pool, vases, and two damn
exploding drones. The pool holds some RPG ammo and shaft that leads
nowhere for now. The vases hide a health bottle.
........
After this door, and the 4 footprint-switches inside, you'll enter a
large 'buried city' area. To your left, down on the ground, there's a
water pool. There's some shotgun ammo down here. A vent halfway up
has a switch behind it. Shoot it, it'll help unlock a later area. At
the bottom is a vent you can kick down that leads to a currently
closed sunken shaft.
In the ramp paths that lead down below, there's a Red Key door. The
wall opposite it can be blown to help your progress, but it's not a
secret.
........
3. One of the 'buildings' in this 'buried city' has grey walls, a
center pool, and a handful of octobrains.
The upper path to this room is reached from another room. A
sand/ground ramp outside that 'building' leads upwards. There's room
at the end of that ramp path, and a vent to the left you can kick
down. Past that vent is a fight with octobrains, and a switch/raising
columns puzzle. The wall that can be blown up by the Red Key door
leads into this octobrains/column room as well.
The columns rise up when you shoot buttons. Your goal is the last
rising column, just a sliver against the wall. That last corner column
leads up to a nearly-hidden switch. Open it, and you'll open a door at
the top of the square column's full height, but also a nearby wall
niche with a splodey-drone and a turret. And some pipebombs!
Lower the square column again, get on it, and raise it back up to the
top. Now you can get into in that grey-walled room, on the upper
walkway. Go left on the walkway, to the corner. One of the corner area
walls (the left one) opens a 'restricted area' room with a joke
octobrain sprite there to scare you I guess. There's shrinker ammo in
here, but no shrinker.
........
Where to go now? Don't bother with the the pool from that
octobrain/platforms room - there was a square metal switch underwater
that opened a sunken shaft to another room - the same one you could
have entered if you went past the vent I had you kick in a bit
earlier. That room was just enemies and some hanging square platforms
that... yeah this whole level is Tomb Raider 1, isn't it?
Instead, jump in the large pool from that Octobrains/pool/grey walls
room with Secret 3. It leads to a sunken vertical chamber with a
turret at the top JUST as you enter. Sneaky bastards.
At the bottom, there's a closed rock-like door, and a side chamber
with much-needed Scuba gear and one of those Important Buttons I
mentioned earlier. Hit it and go back out to the vertical chamber.
About halfway down is a side chamber with alien eggs and another Red
Button to hit. The back wall can be blown up to connect this watery
area to the watery pool on the exterior of the buried city area, where
I mentioned that first Important Button, if you missed it earlier.
Just explode it from a distance...
If you hit all 3 Red Buttons I've mentioned (2 in the vertical
chamber, one in that outside pool) you open the rock door at the
bottom of the vertical chamber. It leads into a reddish-walled
vertical chamber and into a red-lit room of eggs and Octobrains.
Make it through this tough underwater room. A vent near a blue alien
light gives you the blue key. Then swim up and pop up into a room
above a square column. This room is empty except for two torch urns.
........
4. Shoot or kick the right torch urn, and the switch behind it. Exit
this room by opening one of the two corner walls. I'd suggest the left
one - the right one has a pink-apron wearing Pigcop directly
behind it, the left one at least allows you some cover before that
Pigcop and its partner.
Take care of the Pigcops, and enter the elevator that hidden switch
opened. It's a bit tricky to get to move down, try activating it while
entering the open door. But it'll go down into the sort of Tomb Raider
Control room, with 3 doors to open and shoot baddies behind.
There's a teleporter here that would be hidden behind a blue
forcefield if you missed the hidden switch in the technical room in
Secret #1. But with this guide, it will be open! Jump through to
Secret #5!
5. The teleporter leads you to a hall with a chaingun and an exit to
near the Blue Door. Best to just get into this secret room, get the
chaingun, then go back into the teleporter. Then proceed back out of
the Dressing Rooms area, taking the elevator back up to the area with
the aproned-Pigcops. The switch outside this elevator only opens or
closes the door you opened from the switch behind a flaming urn, so
ignore it.
6. Proceed past those dead Pigcops and into an 'open to the sky' room
with an uneven, broken floor. There's an explodable wall in the back
and 2 more pink Pigcops. Whether you've already exploded the wall or
not, walking up to it - or where it used to be - opens a chamber back
where you were, near the secret elevator. With pipebombs! Good thing
too, because you *have* to explode that wall to proceed.
........
Dive in the water, swim a shaft, rise up in a room with more pink
Pigcops! The darker area of this room leads to the Yellow Key and some
hellish laser tripwires you should try to blow up in a way that won't
kill you. If you have pipebombs left, try moving forward a bit,
letting the lasers appear, tossing a pipebomb, moving back behind
cover, and setting off the bomb. And there's more Pigcops around the
corner. Take care of them all, then return to where you got the Yellow
Key for an Atomic Health. You may notice a wall that opens and closes
VERY quickly when yuo enter 'lit' triangular areas in the dark path -
those bright patches also open the atomic health area.
........
7. Near the Yellow Key is an alien switch. Hit it, rush around the
corner, hitting the lit triangles only at the last chance. Rush
through that fast-closing wall (don't get crushed) and rush to your
right, where a secret area with night vision goggles and other goodies
has opened - it closes fast too! This may take a few tries, but you
can re-open the fast wall from a switch by it, and try again.
........
Walking into the cone of light from the torch-urn and waiting a moment
should open the nearby alien-looking door, or you may be able to get
it open on your own. This takes you back near that secret elevator to
the Dressing Rooms. That teleporter in the Dressing Rooms will get you
back to the Blue Door. You should have Blue and Yellow Keys now.
Alternately, with bunch of swimming and walking, you should be able to
find the Blue Key door on your own - in outside path on the edges of
the Buried City area.
Just after it? Three doors and a Yellow Keycard lock. An enemy will be
on the right just after these doors open. Take him down, head to where
he was, and a wall opens behind you. Don't get squished by it, but you
can use it to do the same to a Pigcop! Head around the corner, take
out another Pigcop. There's a vent here - don't bother, it's to
another room we get to later.
You can blow up the wall by the round red button (and be sure to hit
that!). Blowing that wall may help you fight the wave of enemies that
soon appear. The square button will open a wall chamber where that
first enemy in this area stood. Be sure to hit the round red button
here, we'll need that later.
Exit this wing of the Yellow Key area and head up the stairs to some
fun with exploding drones and turrets. At the bottom of the pool is a
floor grate that leads down to an RPG. The red button on the wall here
lowers the floor in the pool to expose a grate. Past that grate you'll
get a shaft to the next room's pool, which has stairs back up out of
the pool. A square button in that 2nd pool opens a way back to a room
we saw ages ago, that had drones and vases.
Work your way out of this 2nd pool, up the stairs, being sure to hit
the round red button you see before you jump back across the 1st pool.
Go back to the 3 doors that opened with the Yellow Key.
The middle Yellow Key door leads to another Tomb Raider Platform-y
room. The grate on your right is no help and was just an alternate
entrance to this room. There's an enemy in the hall visible from the
end, and a small medkit in the corner of the shallow pool at the
bottom. If you hit the round red buttons I mentioned earlier, the door
behind that enemy opens to the Red Key.
8. Work your way back to the Red Door, and head through. You'll soon
be in an open-air cavern with a few octobrains. As you work your way
around the path, you'll see a semi-transparent "Last Crusade" type
pathway - like an invisible path just barely covered with dust. That's
your exit from the level, but *first*... take it about half way then
look down. There's a path down there you can drop to, if you have the
health to spare. One end of that lower path is open to a room with an
enemy, a health bottle, and an atomic health.
9. As you exit that room, a door opens on the other end of this lower
path. Be quick! There's a teleporter in this last secret room that
takes you back up to the Red Door to try the nearly-invisible path to
the exit once again.
Man, that level was overly tough and complicated.
***Trackside Tragedy*** - Wipe Out the Alien Menace!
Note: At the back of the wall that blows up is a little shaft you can
jump to that leads deeper into the level, but you may not want to go
there *just* yet.
1. After the elevator to the "Hospitality Suite" you'll find a
tripwired room with Pigcops. A side wall opens with 2 Pigcops in it.
One of the side walls of this niche opens up.
2. Once you get down into the green alien area, you'll see 4 switches
around a central column. Watch out for the laser tripwires that pop
up! There are 2 high switches and 2 low switches. One high switch
blows open a nearby wall. Open the crevice it leaves and tap the back
wall, behind the shrinker, to open a secret niche with armor.
3. In the alien-wall hall where you get ambushed with about 6
troopers, there are small niches with eggs. The brightest of these
opens to a medkit.
4. Once you can get out onto the track, cross it and jump over the
yellow and black railing. Turn right and walk right into and through
the wall at the end, to a secret area.
5. Jump back out onto the track and look to your right, towards the
flashing red tunnel. Just to its left is another area you can reach by
hopping over the railing. There's an RPG and a breakable wall (leading
to the actual secret).
Not an official secret: Head back onto the track and head against the
directional arrows on the railings and track. There's a large dark
metal door, and a room with an alien boss behind it. It may be best to
clear out the "Red Tunnel Access" room before doing this next part.
Head back out to the larger room and cross the lighter grey area of
floor behind a yellow and black border, then rush back to the Red
Tunnel Access room and through a secret door. There's an elevator up
and a Medkit.
6. Continue to follow the track backwards, and the course will bend
around to the right. There's a number of drones flying around, and
water lower down if you jump off the track (and hey, water drones,
greaaaaat...). In the water below, there's a rocky path to swim, that
reaches small pool. Halfway between the open water area and the small
pool, there's a wall on the outside curve of this water-shaft-thing
that you can open. Swim in and up to s secret room.
7. Swim down and back to that small pool, then surface and follow a
rocky path up. It leads all the way back to a shaft leading to the
start of the map. But along the way, a small side path down leads to
another airshaft and some pipebombs. It seems like this should open a
wall in the map start room, but it doesn't for me.
Not an official secret: In a flickering-light track area, there's a
Pit Lock switch. Across from it, there's a wall to blow up.
8. In the flickering-light track area, the wall next to the Pit Lock
switch opens up.
Not a Secret: Nearby, just outside the red-lit track area, there's a
crack wall next to the angular section of the over-track support.
***Gates Motel*** - Bet this place is full of Evil Residents.
Not a secret: The wall over the couch in the first room opens up to
goodies.
1. Stand on the blue bed with a large dark wood headboard. Activate
it, and you'll go down to a secret teleporter and end up in a
wardrobe. Open it, kill the aliens, grab the yellow key, hit the light
switch on the side of the wardrobe to unlock the room door.
Not yet a secret: In the room with the giant wall TV (that you can
walk through, but don't until you do this bit) close the room door
behind you and get the Devastator behind it. You'll see an 'unlocked'
message.
2. In the room of weirdly almost-random opening wood doors, there's an
oddly skull-shaped wall niche. Face it closely, turn right, walk
forward into a hallway. Then turn right into a false wall for a
shotgun.
3. Proceed down this hallway. A nearby room flickers with a fireplace.
Enter it and proceed through to a secret Medkit.
4. After you go back up the elevator, walls will explode around you.
You can jump down a hole in the wall to get to kitchen. Having got
that devastator before, you can open a wall in the back right corner
of the freezer room. The back of that secret area opens back to the
front hall.
Not a secret: After the fake-out at the exit button, you fall in the
water. Blow up the tanks in the water area to get to a Freezethrower.
5. After that, walking up the ramps around the water tank in the final
(green-walled, red-floored) area opens both the walls to the exit
button *and* a small secret area in the wall opposite the exit button.
***Duke Royale*** With Cheese.
1. Behind the desk upstairs in the restaurant is a small secret door
that leads to a magazine, handcuffs, and a pistol clip.
2. Use the false wall at the back of the Pigcop Garage Doors, or jump
out the window of the Medkit room in the first building. Blow up the
yellow tanks and enter the wall area that it blows up for a secret.
3. In the clean white apartment, duck into the fireplace and jump up
to the left for a grate. Kick it and enter an airduct. Cross through
it to another apartment for a secret.
Once you get through the 2nd apartment and its boobytrapped bedroom,
blow up the wall on the balcony. Repeat in the next room down below to
get closer to the Blue Keycard doors.
The lower Blue door is garage doors that open back up to the street.
4. In the dark, flickering-light underground area near the blue key
garage doors, the shortest section of wall here opens to a secret.
When you're looking right at it, the small elevator floor up to the
2nd Blue door will be on your left and in the near distance.
Up that small elevated platform, the smaller Blue key door opens to
another Tarantino scene and several enemies. There's a jetpack in the
trashcan.
5. Off this warehouse room is an opening leading to a bathroom with
the Red Key, if you go left. And the right path leads down to some
urinals. Next to the far toilet is a secret wall to be opened.
After the red key door, a secret button down behind the counter opens
the window display of guns.
6. In the club, after clearing the shootout(s), jump up to the
dancers. Then leap back down to a small door that's opened in the
2-sided liquor rack/bar.
***Alien Rendezvous***
1. After you go down the Blue Key elevator, go forward, crouch, and
start hitting the Open button until a bit of wall opens to an air
duct. Enter it, then kick the end before it turns to the right. Go
through for a jetpack and the secret.
2. Just outside the room that lowers a central column with a boss
alien, hit the white wall for a secret area with a medkit and other
items.
Secret Level Entrance: The three buttons on the bottom of the large
central column that hold a boss enemy will open a green, alien pathway
down to the secret exit. It's one-way, once you enter that last room
the only way out is the secret exit!
***Faces of Death*** The brutal secret level.
Avoid if you can, it’s not worth the trouble.
Secrets 1 and 2:
There's two lava 'walls' on the outer ring. Jetpack up a bit and fly
into each for the two secrets on this level.
Exiting the level:
After killing the final enemy, there are two hidden wall vents you can
jump up in the wall on the opposite side of his room (on the other
side of the lava river and floating 'chair'). They're basically in the
same area of the wall as the round switches were next to the last
alien's door. What a silly-ass way to make a secret level, taking an
old deathmatch level. Ugh. Good luck getting out, watch for tripmines
in the air vent. Maybe drop a pipebomb down and blow it before
dropping down the air shaft.
***Ministry of Fear***
1. A red curtain with a sun logo over it leads you to a DJ booth. Open
the left bookcase there.
2. Just past the DJ booth is a hallway and room with grey and white
zigzag walls. Go partway up the middle ramp in that room. You'll hear
a woman scream. Turn around and go back down the ramp, taking out an
ambush of aliens. Go back out the hallway you came in, and a niche has
opened in the wall.
3. Nearby, down on the red, green, and blue dancefloor, tapping the
wall where a green floor square meets the wall will open a secret
wall. There's two green floor squares touching the wall, the left one
is the one you want.
4. In the arcade, walk into the slightly lit corner between a Duke
Nukem screen and a racing game screen. The nearby cola machine will
slide down, opening to a room.
5. Past the arcade is a lower bar with a green spinning light pattern
on the floor. Nearby is a back hallway with a Yellow Door in a blue
hallway. Nearby, there's an Out of Order door. Blow it up. Blow it up
good. Go through the chamber behind it and into the blown-away wall
for shrinker ammo and other things.
6. Whether you go through one Yellow door or the other, come back to
the lower bar with the spinning green floor pattern. In the sub-bar
nearby with couches in niches in the walls, a Red Keycard hole opens,
and is a secret. If you cross the room you open with the yellow key,
be careful not to trigger the boss behind the curtains!
7. Find the Red Keycard door by working your way back toward the
beginning of the level. Go through, turn right, right again, and open
the wall.
8. As you fight the final boss, things are exploding everywhere. Get
up on the boss's stage, and blow up a cracked well. Work your way into
the 'city' area behind it and find a sign on the exterior wall marked
"Armory". Open that door and blow the fire extinguisher in the back. A
crack blows open to an atomic health.
There's four red buttons on a wall in this 'smashed city' area, but
damned if I know what they do.
