The AK47 in Uncharted 3 has caused a lot of grief to UC2 newbies and veteran players with it’s extremely weird recoil. After some testing, I have uncovered some facts, which may help you understand and master it.
The facts of the AK recoil
- The 1st shot always hits exactly on the white dot
- The 2nd shot and thereafter may cause random crosshair ‘bounce’, but the bullet will always hit where the white dot is
- After letting go of the trigger the crosshair will always return exactly to where it was when you first fired.
- The crosshair bounce is actually limited to a circular area around the white dot.
- As you fire, the circle expands, which increases the overall area where the crosshair can ‘bounce’ to
- There is no way to stop the bounce except by firing one shot at a time.
Unconfirmed
The following items I have yet to confirm due to insufficient testing.
- There seems to be an aim assist effect where if your first shot lands the game is more likely to award you more hits (by making the screen bounce less).
- Not just limited tot the AK, but the aim assist also seems to interfere with target tracking. The assist seems to alightly track behind the target (hence why it is hard to shoot at a moving target).
What does this all mean?
- The recoil is primarily caused the crosshair bounce. Meaning the AK is almost exactly where the white dot is, but the screen bouncing is what’s causing it to be inaccurate.
- The fact that the crosshair returns to where you originally fired means that there is no upward drift, so you don’t need to hold the stick down to compensate.
Another way to think of it is like this. The screen crosshair bouncing is actually an illusion, you are actually shooting straight, but the AK is spraying randomly. This is why the gun is really hard to use at first, because when you are trying to fight the recoil you are actually overcompensating and ruining your aim. People who also try to burst fire it get screwed because the randomness starts after the first shot.
Try to ignore the bouncing crosshair, but instead keep a mental note of where your gun was pointed when you started shooting, which helps when trying to track moving targets. Once you understand the fact that the gun is actually shooting ‘almost’ exactly where you pointed it to begin with (due to the small circular crosshair bounce) is when you’ll start appreciating it’s power.
