I wrote a few days ago about thoughts prompted by Accepted. In its own way, that movie is also about hope. Many movies and stories can be found to be about hope and not giving up on dreams. Our history is filled with dreamers. Martin Luther King had a dream that most people have heard. In United States history, there is a strong culture of hope. The US was founded by individuals with a hope of greater religious freedoms. There is a strong notion of the foreign individual coming to the US to pursue a dream of a better life.

Hope is powerful. Hope can stimulate a person to start a business through entrepeneurship. Hope can keep an inventor from giving up after failed attempts to make a lightbulb. Hope has its risks as well though. Hope can also make a person gamble away what money he or she has. Hope can also make a person’s mind closed to unsupportive ideas.

I have my hopes and dreams. I work toward them. I believe all people should have their dreams and work towards them. A dream without progress toward that dream doesn’t really do much good. However, I believe that progress should be balanced. A dream should not be approached blindly. In the movie, Charles Farmer is not blindly trying to build a rocket. He had in fact been in the space program. He had an education in aerospace engineering. That background gave credence to his hope. His hope was not blind. He knew what he was doing. That’s why hope doesn’t do so well with gambling. No amount of background lets you beat the probabilities. There is no credence.

Go for your dreams. Maintain your hope. Gain the background to do so.

I’d like to see a third movie, but I agree with what I’ve read Bill Murray has said about the venture: If it’s going to happen, it needs to have a good story.

As for the video game, I was rather impressed by it. I thought the story was good, tying together the plot of each Ghostbusters movie. It also was very good visually. The characters looked and sounded just like the originals. I hadn’t played a video game like this since the days of crazy pixelation, so that was impressive to me. I thought the gameplay was rather straightforward as well. There were four weapon combinations from which to choose, and you only had access to new ones gradually through the game. You only had a main weapon and a secondary weapon at any time. You didn’t have to remember what key is to shoot, what key is to throw grenades, what key is to use your knife and so forth that is the case with some other games I’ve tried playing. I liked it being simple. I do think the gameplay time was less than I would have liked though.