IRL, I think it's an OK car if you're not looking for a fire breather but a daily driver that's also fun to drive. It has really fun handling and it's reasonably quick. I think most people slacking it off just drove it in GT5 and base their opinions on that (comparing it to an SLS or whatnot) or don't even have a drivers license and assume any car with less than 300 hp is crap. Seriously... My only complaint is the lack of top end power. It just gets too linear above 4.500 rpm which is OK for pootling about in town but I personally like more of a sprint where the engine pulls all the way to the red line. Nothing an aftermarket camshaft and a tune can't fix. They have their reasons not to make it like that though, since the new Euro 5 norms are in place and the CR-Z is mainly aimed at the European market as a competitor for the Mini One/Cooper (not the S) and the VW Scirocco 1.4 TSI. Mind you, they have to keep within a certain median emissions range calculated over the total sales over the entire model range, so if they made a 200 hp CR-Z and they sell 3.000 of them the first year they're in trouble if they don't release some cheap and equally succesful low emission model parallel to it. That's why they killed off the Civic Type-R in Europe this year: it sold too well and they risked facing a big fine if they continued selling it like that. It's also the reason why they hold back the NSX successor (forgot the name), and Toyota (Lexus) charge 300k for the LFA which was supposed to be the successor to the Supra and direct competition for the Nissan GT-R. Nissan made the choice to take the risk with the GT-R hoping it would generate some sales with the dreamers in the lower model echelons, Honda doesn't and Toyota (Lexus) took the middle way - after killing off ALL of their afordable sporty models (all of the T-Sports, even the Yaris T-Sport, the Celica models, the MR range,... all gone, and no Tacoma in Europe).
I haven't tried the CR-Z in the game yet apart from some snow driving in arcade, maybe I should give it a more detailed go one of these days.
