No, 'machine guns' (support weapons) do not have high recoil. Their entire purpose is sustained accurate suppressing fire. They're some of the most accurate and manageable weapons available to the modern infantryman. For example, the M249 is a 5.56x45mm beltfed automatic support weapon chambered in the same round as the standard infantry rifle of the United States military. It's heavier, bulkier, and has multiple features integrated into the platform specifically designed to manage recoil. There's no logic behind the notion that a heavy 5.56 support weapon will somehow have twenty times the recoil as a lighter 5.56 carbine, even if the firerate is higher.

As someone who shoots regularly in real life, I can safely say the recoil and muzzle climb in the Alpha is ridiculous. "Realism" doesn't mean inane levels of uncontrollable recoil. Anyone who's been around firearms can tell you that they're not nearly as hard to control - even at a standing stance - as hollywood would lead you to believe. In real life, muzzle climb is easily managed for the most part by a trained individual, and most recoil is directed rearward into your shoulder and counteracted by your firing stance.

In particular the support weapons are abysmal. Fire four rounds out of the MX support variant or the KAC LMG and your muzzle will be in the air. They're unusable in any stance, and that's simply not realistic. The muzzle climb needs to be lowered dramatically, I don't see how this is debatable in any way. The regular infantry rifles are usable in semiautomatic because it's easy to realign your sight picture and fire followup shots, even if the recoil is too high, but an automatic rifleman's explicit duty is to provide bursts of automatic sustained suppressing fire. As it stands, he cannot do that, even in prone.

ArmA II's weapons handling was spot on - rounds went where you aimed them (as they do in real life), recoil was manageable and fair, and at no time did I feel cheated by my weapon instead of questioning my ability.

So no, recoil and muzzle climb is not fine, and it's definitely not realistic. It needs to be changed, because as it is certain weapons are near useless.