Naughty Dog addresses Uncharted 3 gunplay debate

Reckon the shooting in PlayStation 3 exclusive Uncharted 3 feels off? You're not alone.

Players have complained about the aiming in the action adventure on NeoGAF and on Naughty Dog's forum, saying it restricts accurate gunplay.

Naughty Dog has addressed the complaints and explained the changes it's made.

Guns fire in a "completely different way" in Uncharted 3 than they do in Uncharted 2, community manager Arne Meyer wrote on the Naughty Dog website.

"Keep that in mind, as it affects your perception of gun combat as a whole since it's very easy to want to compare the two sets of mechanics between the two games.

"In Uncharted 2 the bullets would leave the barrel at a pre-set deviation when you were aimed in. What this means is that the bullets would not fire straight out of the barrel all the time - they could come out at an angle. Therefore, you could have a target clearly in the reticule and still miss it by a wide margin. This was frustrating, because it was difficult to tell why you were missing a target.

"As a result, we wanted to be sure you had a better grasp of whether you were hitting or missing a target. In Uncharted 3 the bullets now fire straight out of the barrel 100 per cent of the time. However, we have recoil - where the reticule moves/bounces as you fire. Therefore, it is easier to tell if you are missing or hitting a target. Now it is much more obvious when you are hitting or missing based on the reticule itself."

Meyer said aiming in Uncharted 3 is identical to aiming in Uncharted 2, although the sensitivity has been adjusted to be higher in Uncharted 3 to give players a more precise feel.

"With Uncharted 2 it was pretty much guaranteed you would aim in one of the eight directions and it was hard to deviate from that (imagine it being almost like a traditional eight-way arcade stick). With Uncharted 3, you can deviate from the straight path from each of the eight directions much easier and more precisely."

Also, enemies run faster in Uncharted 3 to their desired position, which changes the flow of combat.

"Perhaps one of the more significant changes revolves around the accuracy to the AK rifles," Meyer explained. "In Uncharted 2, you could fire the AK across the map with extreme accuracy, and thus players would tend to stick with the AK all the time. In Uncharted 3, we changed the AK to be used at closer ranges to encourage players to use other guns rather than just keeping the AK the entire game.

"Fact is, the AK in Uncharted 3 isn't great at long range intentionally. The GMAL or the M9 are much better choices for long range combat. Don't forget that the AK also works much better and with better accuracy if you burst fire it rather than just holding the trigger down."