But I was told this gen they were hasher than PS360 gen...
They most definitely are actually, with exceptions for certain devs/publishers (Nintendo, Rockstar etc.), just compare the amount of 90+ metacritic on PS3 to the PS4 or how on PS2 sports titles, which nowadays rarely break into the 80s I feel, constantly went above 90.
In regards to the thread I think it's because game reviewing is still a comparatively young field that is still kind of trying to figure things out somewhat. We've started to see some level of "course correction" this generation, with more of the score spectrum being used in game reviews. However I think that there's still a certain hesitation to use the entire spectrum simply because people have been conditioned over the last 10+ years that anything below an 8 essentially means that a game is trash. So I feel like we're still in this process of being eased into review scores actually using the whole 10 point scale this generation.